Printable Diwali Safety Checklist
Generate a personalised, printable firecracker safety checklist for your home — tailored to kids, pets, apartment or house. Free PDF, no signup.
Short answer:
- Fill the water bucket and clear the burst site of parked vehicles, dry leaves and overhead wires before anyone opens a box (PESO).
- The straight-elbow lighting technique, candle or agarbathi, ground level, then step back, prevents most hand and face burns.
- Sound crackers stay outside PESO's 10 pm–6 am window; several states cut that further, and every legal cracker sits under the Supreme Court's 125 dB(AI) ceiling at 4 metres.
- Kids and pets need their own rows on this list, not a smaller copy of the adult one.
How to use it
Print or screenshot the table below and work down the matching column at each point in the evening. Clear the "before" column once, before the first cracker is lit, then keep "during" in view while crackers are actually going off. The kids and pets rows aren't extras tacked on at the end; PESO's own safety notice treats supervision and containment for each as a separate instruction, not a scaled-down version of the adult rule.
The checklist
| Before you light | During bursting | After the last cracker | Kids | Pets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bucket of water filled, within arm's reach | One person lights one item at a time, ground level, straight elbow, step back | Every used or leftover cracker soaked in water before disposal | An adult lights every item a child is near; the child never holds the taper or the cracker | Settled in an interior room away from windows, curtains drawn, before the noise starts |
| Site is open ground, clear of parked vehicles, dry leaves, overhead wires and building windows | No cracker held while lit; no bending over one that's already lit | Burst site checked for anything still smouldering | Sparklers and all lit items kept at true arm's length from a child's face | ID tag and microchip details current before the evening begins |
| Everyone in cotton, loose ends tied back | A dud is left untouched for 15–20 minutes before anyone approaches it | Leftover stock moved to dry storage | Children stick to ground-based, lower-noise items, not aerial shots | Never brought outside to watch, even from a distance |
| Aerial items have a clear landing zone with nothing overhead | No lighting indoors, in a container, in a narrow lane or on a public road | Legal timing window rechecked so a late round doesn't run past it | One adult's full attention per lit item near a child, not one adult watching several at once | Kept in the closed space through the whole legal window, not just the loudest minutes |
| This state's legal bursting window checked for today; green-crackers-only confirmed if local air quality is moderate or worse | Aerial items allowed to finish and cool before the next one goes up |
Why these rows, not others
Every line above comes from PESO's official Deepavali safety notice and the Supreme Court's noise-ceiling order, not general advice, and the full reasoning behind each rule lives on our firecracker safety guide: why the elbow stays straight, why a dud gets a 15–20 minute wait rather than a quick look, and where only certified green crackers are legal under the NGT's air-quality orders. If a burn or eye injury happens anyway, first aid for cracker burns has the exact PESO and WHO treatment steps, cooling time, what never to put on a burn, the 10-minute eye wash. For the supervision detail behind the kids row, see crackers safety for kids; for the pets row, cracker safety for pets during festivals covers the indoor-space setup in full. More checklists and calculators live on the tools hub.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the one item on this checklist people skip most often?
The water bucket. PESO's own notice frames it as the single habit that turns a spark into a non-event instead of a house fire, and it has to be filled before the first cracker, not fetched after something catches.
Is a printed checklist actually necessary if everyone already knows the rules?
The setup and lighting rules are simple individually, but a real bursting session has several people, several boxes and one evening to get all of it right at once. A printed or screenshotted list catches the row someone forgot in the moment, which is exactly when PESO's data shows most avoidable injuries happen.
Do kids and pets really need separate rows, not just "supervise closely"?
Yes. PESO's guidance treats child supervision as a distinct instruction, an adult holds the taper, not the child, at true arm's length. Pets can't be told to hold still or stay indoors, so their row is about containment before the noise starts, not supervision during it.
What do I do if a cracker on the checklist doesn't fire?
Leave it alone. PESO's instruction is a 15–20 minute wait with no approach or tampering, then soak it in a bucket of water before anyone handles it again. That's the "during" and "after" rows working together, not a separate emergency step.
Does this checklist cover the legal timing rules for my state?
Only the baseline: PESO's national 10 pm–6 am window for sound crackers. Several states set narrower, court-ordered hours for specific festivals, so confirm your city's actual window before the evening starts rather than assuming the national one applies.
Ready to celebrate?
Order Tools at Sivakasi net-rate prices
Pick your crackers, place the order online, and we'll confirm the details — pay securely by UPI or card, with fast delivery across India.