There is a certain arrogance and a certain ' I knew it all in advance ' theme about it. The author points out a number of times she is the authority on the topic, and I felt like there is an uncalled for need to confirm that a number of times in the book. In the same vein the UK DVI (disaster victim identification unit) is positioned as world class. I can understand the professional and national pride, but other similar units from other countries have their leanings and achievements too. None of that is discussed in any detail in this book. (France teams the aftermath of facing Bataclan, or Dutch teams working on MH-17 are mentioned briefly or a single one liner and that's it). That's a missed opportunity IMHO, what did these teams learn the Brits and vice versa what did these teams learn from the UK teams ? none of that, which makes you think they work in isolation. Ones own morality is tested here. The work of pathologists certainly was an eye opener. But then, understanding why pigeons the biggest issue at the accident scene shows how incredibly little is known dealing with the dead in mass numbers. Out of the dust: Britain’s leading disaster expert on coping with crisis (edited extract from When the Dust Settles, The Guardian, March 2022) Lucy Easthope lives with disaster every day. When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, she's the one they call.

Mixes disaster-grade C.S.I. with hiraeth , a Welsh word expressing a deep longing for something that is gone" NEW YORKER McLaren, Iona (18 November 2022). "The best biographies of 2022: From Queen Elizabeth II to John Donne". The Telegraph . Retrieved 27 November 2022. This was also very personal to the author's own life - she was very open about her many miscarriages and her relationship with her husband. It must have been difficult to be so open about this, but I think it is a very important aspect of her life that has also influenced her work and life outlook. Easthope’s respect for the deceased, including those who are unaccounted for, is evidenced throughout the book. A less vulnerable and less reflective writer would have produced a chronicle of human desolation and doggedly faithful response, repeatedly frustrated by official ineptitude and the all-too-intelligible longing to draw a line under terrible memories. What makes this book distinctive is, first of all, the poignant awareness that loss is not to be “cured”, but can be integrated and honestly lived with if people are given the right level of time and attention; and secondly, the willingness to connect personal trauma with the sufferings of others – in a way that respects the sheer difference of those other people’s pain, yet assumes that mutual learning is always possible. It shows, time and again, an empathic grasp both of the chaotic emotions of those most directly affected by disaster, the pressure and confusion with which officials work in such circumstances, and the ease with which mistakes can be made out of misplaced goodwill. Easthope writes with understanding, for example, about the local council officials caught up in the Grenfell Tower tragedy, dropped into the deepest of water without much in the way of support or training.

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All this difficult and imagination-stretching work underlines the conviction that we must be serious about our “furniture” and our “habitat”. To respect and love one another is a matter of finding meaning in the physical stuff of ourselves and our world. Our responses need to be as “layered” as the reality before us: “Disasters don’t happen in societal isolation,” Easthope writes: what looks like the same kind of catastrophe may be significantly different because of this. I liked the insight into the aftermath of disasters, including some aspects which I hadn't really considered before. I appreciated Lucy Easthope's personal focus on recovering personal items and centering the recovery on the survivors being able to grieve and move on in the best way for them. This applies in individual as well as in collective contexts. In counterpoint to her narrative of professional involvement, Easthope tells us something of her own experience of loss, especially of successive miscarriages and the near-loss of her husband in an unexpected medical crisis. It is not only that these individual traumas have to be negotiated and endured in the midst of an unremitting programme of work; it is also that the lessons learned in both contexts overlap and illuminate one another. It's a singular career and vocation, no doubt attracting rather singular and special people. (She shares how both her aunt and uncle were coroners and she did work experience with them as a young woman, when others of us are manning photocopiers or working as cleaners' assistants.)

Accounts of disaster are juxtaposed with stories of the author’s challenging personal life. She details system failures and injustices while sharing stories of her own experience with multiple miscarriages and ill fortune – terrible police protocols that cause further harm to bereaved families, disrespect for the personal effects of people who have died in natural disasters or terrorist incidents, and systemic prejudice and incompetence. Such metacommentary is common as Easthope balances her influence on and role within the infrastructure of disaster response with its good intentions and inevitable shortcomings. She is known globally for her work and holds research positions in the UK and New Zealand. She is a Professor in Practice of Risk and Hazard at the University of Durham and Fellow in Mass Fatalities and Pandemics at the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath.It was such an eye opening read and at times incredibly frustrating, when you could see that there was a better way of doing something but that those with the authority to make changes refused to listen. I found the chapter on Grenfell particularly hard and moving to read, especially as someone who works in social housing. People shouldn't be let down in the way they were. The book also made me rethink my opinions on a lot of things, the final chapter on the covid pandemic gave me pause for thought and was again, all the more difficult to read about once you know that this was anticipated and planned for. With profound compassion and empathy throughout, the actual work undertaken knowing what they are handling is chilling. Easthope recalls sorting limbs with boots attached, when British soldiers were returned from the war in Iraq. She also tells of gathering limbs in frantic panic after given just 30 minutes in a war zone, after a plane blown out of the sky,

For over two decades she has challenged others to think differently about what comes next, after tragic events. She is a passionate and thought-provoking voice in an area that few know about: emergency planning. However in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, her work has become decidedly more mainstream. Alongside advising both the Prime Minister’s Office and many other government departments and charities during the pandemic, she has found time to reflect on a life in disaster.

When the Dust Settles

Her focus is on recovery but she is also involved in planning. The final part of the book which touches briefly on the pandemic only hints at the frustration that she must have felt, after years of struggling to convince those in power of the importance of detailed implementation and recovery plans, and training, to see things fall apart in the way that they did. Her ongoing concern for those who died and those who survived does not ignore the politics or incompetence but focuses on the impact on people which, as she points out, we shall be living with for a very long time.

As I prepare to publish my book, a newly terrifying disaster is unfolding in Ukraine. Once again my phone is ringing through the day and into the night as humanitarian colleagues try to make sense of what is going on all around them. Whatever happens over the next days, months and weeks, one thing is clear: this is a disaster on a scale not seen in Europe for many decades. As soon as possible, the lessons we’ve learned from disaster recovery elsewhere must be put into practice, swiftly and effectively and, most importantly, in the best way possible to help the people most affected. She has travelled across the world in this unusual role, seeing the very worst that people have to face and finding that even the most extreme of situations, we find the very best of humanity. In her moving memoir, she reveals what happens in the aftermath. She takes us behind the police tape to scenes of destruction and chaos, introducing us to victims and their families, but also to the government briefing rooms and bunkers, where confusion and stale biscuits can reign supreme. It starts off with the Hillsborough disaster which deeply affected the city of Liverpool, the author's home city. It still does affect Liverpudlians, to the extent newsagents still refuse to sell one of Britain's biggest selling daily tabloid newspapers on its shelves. While at the time Easthope was a child, she described how the incident affected her and what path she ultimately chose to follow.

This book is a non-fiction and is Lucy Easthope's experience as a disaster planner. She has dealt with almost every major disaster in the last 20 years, from 9/11 to the pandemic, and has even had first hand experience of some events, like the 7/7 bombings and the Alton Towers crash. It also takes a look at other major disasters including 9/11, MH370 and the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004. We also look at the Grenfell Tower fire and of course, the Covid-19 pandemic. Entwined with these large scale catastrophes is Professor Easthope’s own experience of loss and disaster. She grew up in Liverpool and was 10 when the Hillsborough disaster occurred. On a school trip, her ferry passed by the capsized Herald of Free Enterprise. These events helped shaped her resolve to understand and assist at times of chaos and devastation. Looming in and out of view is also her own struggle with pregnancy loss. This generosity is one of the things that makes the book so powerful, all the more as it never slips into a sentimental glossing over of incompetence or insensitivity. Easthope makes no secret of her anger, but takes care that it should be properly understood and directed, and doesn’t create more stigma, fear, defensiveness and failure. Both in its style and in its substance, this is a profoundly moral book, written with deceptive conversational ease; it opens up a world of terrible and extreme experience, but stubbornly continues to look at what’s there, the inner and outer landscape of what Easthope is not afraid to call the soul. In her fascinating memoir, which also covers the work she's done throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, she shares her experiences of the frontline - Evening Standard