When the Dust Settles: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER. 'A marvellous book' -- Rev Richard Coles

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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. 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. the people who remain long after the climax of initial disaster. People such as Lucy Easthope, who dwell in the places most of us can only imagine. Laura Kennedy A deeply moving and fascinating insight when life is at its most brutal, who comes to organize, support and recover afterwards. When humanity is taken apart, it is Easthope and her colleagues who step in with care and compassion. Even in the face of an uncaring and incompetent government.

In a review for The Irish Times, Laura Kennedy writes, "Easthope has pioneered methods that maximise the virtues of courage, respect and dignity in scenarios where those virtues are standardly obliterated by panic and instinct. She is – sometimes literally in the context of the book, but also figuratively – the person with a comforting demeanour, a calm tone and a strong cup of tea when things are at their most bleak." [15] According to a review by Laura Dodsworth in The Critic, "This book rewrites your perceptions of the disasters and wars of our lifetime with vivid details and vignettes. Yes, some of these are dark, but there is often humour, and the book is laced with humanity and decency." [16] The Recovery Myth [ edit ] Mixes disaster-grade C.S.I. with hiraeth , a Welsh word expressing a deep longing for something that is gone" NEW YORKER 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.

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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. This beautifully written, heartfelt book is not an easy read. Lucy Easthope is a remarkable person and the story of her career in disaster recovery, intertwined with her personal memoir, is, in turn, horrifying, saddening and ultimately inspiring. Her overwhelming purpose of caring for those caught up in disasters (all sadly familiar names to us), both the living and the dead, is a force for great good but the work that she and the teams with which she works is little known and therefore sadly underrated. This book should be widely read to correct that.

This was a book I got up early and stayed up late for. A fascinating memoir from Professor Lucy Easthope on her work as a disaster advisor. McLaren, Iona (18 November 2022). "The best biographies of 2022: From Queen Elizabeth II to John Donne". The Telegraph . Retrieved 27 November 2022. The author is clearly most passionate about the finer details of her work, that being the areas which may be forgotten about amongst the immediate chaos.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. Elsewhere, Easthope recalls the “viewing rooms” for corpses that “would smell strongly of instant coffee”, since “the embalmer’s facial reconstruction kit was often overwhelmingly biased towards white skin and I was appalled to see that well into the 2000s the way round this was to mix Nescafe granules into the mixture if the deceased was anything other than pink”. And speaking of smells, though there are apparently “some similar compounds in fresh-cut grass, semen, particular vegetables, animal meat and menstrual blood”, nothing quite matches the “assault on your nasal passages” of decomposing bodies. Not only has the experience “put [Easthope] off mushrooms for life”, but the particular cleaning fluid used in mortuaries “has a canny, fateful habit of turning up at the wrong moment”, such as in “the toilets of a concert venue on an anniversary night out”. Though laced with bleak humour, this vivid and humane book forces readers to look into some exceptionally dark places. Yet it also makes a powerful case for facing up to the worst head on, if we ever want to find hope and even a measure of healing after disaster. Easthope conveys the wretched physicality without veering into vulgarity or callousness. Still, she is frank in the extreme Our lives are all punctuated by culture-changing disaster events. If you were conscious when 9/11 occurred, you will recall where you were when a plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. You’ll recall witnessing an event that removed us from “before” and plunged us into “after”.

Easthope’s own trials – to start a family and other medical upheavals – make for quite a pulsating subplot. A modern-day Cassandra, she has taught herself to fear disaster on her own doorstep. She gets a bad feeling on a 2015 trip to Alton Towers. Sure enough, a roller coaster malfunctions in high winds, causing amputations. Her husband had just got off it. With 7/7 “it had always been a question of when”. Ditto the coronavirus pandemic. Most spookily, at a conference she war-games a disaster scenario involving a high-rise inferno killing occupants from many cultures, with local government partly to blame. “We can’t plan on a fantasy,” sniffs one attendee. The 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster happened two days later. 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.

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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. There is some debate about whether a disaster is the initial “big bang” or the years that follow. Life after disaster is perpetual, chronic, with a pain that ebbs and flows like tides. Errors made in the response can change the course of the recovery and undermine the longer-term psycho-social health of whole communities. I thought I knew what trauma was and what causes it. But in the course of my work, I have discovered a new enduring loss brought about by the loss of everything – something the people of Ukraine now face. 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. Whilst it could be a bit of a grim read at times, depictions of bodies decomposing, the way autopsies and mortuaries work, finding and cataloging remains and personal items after disaster. However, it was also a real look at the humanity of death and disaster, of communities coming together, of the very secret 'Cinderella service' of an entire operation of disaster experts, police, search and rescue, the fire brigade, paramedics, funeral directors, the list really does go on. She is the author of When the Dust Settles: Stories of Love, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster and The Recovery Myth: The Plans and Situated Realities of Post-Disaster Response.