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

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The gripping story of an extraordinary life spent inside major disasters - from Hillsborough and 9/11 to Grenfell and Covid - from the UK's leading expert on disaster recovery. It does for disaster what Rachel Clarke's Dear Life has done for palliative medicine and Adam Kay's This Is Going To Hurt for obstetrics. Lucy is one of those rare individuals that sees value in all experiences and seeks to teach us that perfection and imperfection are woven together. She covers a whole range of topics and it’s amazing that while her writing is an objective account of dealing with disasters, it’s also not coldly clinical-her chapter on human trafficking, for instance, is deeply moving.

The author comes across so clearly as a person with extreme good sense alongside vast wells of patience and empathy. It was interesting to read how risks are detailed and managed and how various organisations interlink to ensure the recovery processes are followed in line with current best practice. She stated that if mutual aid is discursively recast as ‘social capital’ then only sections of ‘civil society’ that are palatable to the state and which it can capitalize on and control are seen as acceptable. As a disaster expert whose responsibilities include making the loss of loved ones as bearable as possible for those left behind, she had plenty of experience working on memory boxes, right down to the package design (“too ‘gifty’ and it looked all wrong”). In a simultaneously heart-breaking and hilarious scene (as DisasterHusband is still very much alive), she recounts how she scooped the plastic bag with her husbands bloody shoes and clothes out of the medical waste bin in hospital.From what I'd heard I expected it to concentrate on the experiences of the author who is an expert in how disasters can be recovered from. For over two decades she has challenged others to think differently about what comes next, after tragic events. At the core of her job is a “process known as Disaster Victim Identification, which involves painstaking analysis by pathologists, anthropologists and odontologists to append a name to flesh, bone and teeth”. The tone, tempo and clarity was just right, given the highly sensitive and disturbing nature of some of the disaster scenes described.

A note: I recently had the privilege of meeting and hearing from the author shortly after reading this book at the HSJ Patient Safety Congress, and what a treat her lecture was. Which must be particularly frustrating for people like Easthope, for whom disaster planning is their bread and butter. The book gave me so much more insight and education into what happens once the first responders have left.

Nonetheless, Easthope emerges as a likable, quietly stoical and ultimately heroic character who has endured her own hardships and whose instinctive empathy and compassion make a tangible difference to the lives of people at their most vulnerable. a graphic but deeply humane account of what drew her to take on such work, and how she steels herself to tackle the worst of human scenarios.

Sometimes disasters happen around her, or just after (as at Grenfell) she has delivered training on the subject (the Grenfell training was criticized as too grim and unrealistic). I sincerely hope that those in charge will continue to listen to her, as I think a lot of heartache is prevented when disasters are managed, properly, honestly and without any political agenda. When the Dust Settles is Easthope’s candid, unsettling and at times darkly funny account of a life spent planning for and dealing with the aftershocks of catastrophe. As one of the world's leading experts on disaster she has been at the centre of the most seismic events of.Her tasks in such situations range from identifying bodies and recovering victims’ personal belongings to “relocating people who have lost their homes to floods, and planning ahead for possible future disasters”. In When the Dust Settles we see how over the years the UK government becomes less invested in investing in disaster planning. The book also reminded me of several events that I had blocked from my memory, even quite recent ones, such as a truck that was used for human trafficking, which contained the bodies of 39 Vietnamese victims. The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report.

Later, in my back garden, I found large chunks of charred insulating foam, the sight of which gave me a lump in my throat. Once you get past those grimmer, but very real parts of disaster recovery and management, there is so much warmth to be found, from the cups of tea handed to families and first responders, the memory boxes made, the coming together of communities. When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, Lucy Easthope’s phone starts to ring. Entwined with these large scale catastrophes is Professor Easthope’s own experience of loss and disaster. It is not always what you might think, and assumptions can and do lead to further smaller tragedies.whether she knows it or not, she is that rare thing, a genuine philosopher thinking through what she is actually doing in the mitigation of human suffering, grief and isolation. It is emotionally grueling at times, yet the author’s calm resolve will help you to deal with death and uncertainty.