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. Lucy Easthope, the UK’s leading authority on disaster recovery, understands this division of reality in a way that few people ever could. In the wake of 9/11, she was tasked with assembling a team of mortuary and funeral personnel to work at Ground Zero and in facilities storing the human remains and personal effects of victims. This new memoir is an astonishingly thorough account of the elements of disaster we don’t see. She exposes readers to the planning and recovery stages of the worst imaginable natural and man-made occurrences. Yet, It is indeed fascinating to understand the logistics: for example how field mortuaries are organized - the radiographers have to be legally distanced so their machines are safe for those also around.

The chronology of Easthope’s life is marked by hundreds of catastrophic events, the types most people won’t see one of first-hand in their lifetime – from sunken ships, floods, train and plane crashes to the 7/7 bombings, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, the Iraq War, the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the Grenfell Tower fire and, most recently, the Covid-19 pandemic. 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. 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. Start with those closest to you and work outwards. Find a balance between the negative stresses of a life in readiness and fear and the comfort of 'being prepared'." 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.

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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. Easthope was born and raised in Liverpool, England. [6] She began her career in disaster management and recovery at Kenyon International Emergency Services after completing a degree in law at the University of Bristol and a MSc in Risk, Crisis and Disaster Management at Leicester University. [7] [1] [6] 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. 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.

These are historic events we all think we know but in this moving memoir Lucy lifts the curtain and reveals what really happens. 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. This was eye opening to say the least and frankly terrifying in places! I'm a disaster expert – and it helped me get through my own ( BBC News Outlook Podcast, March 2022) Step forward Lucy Easthope, whose eye-opening memoir unveils precisely what it means to be a part of a clandestine profession. As she relates in When the Dust Settles, her first job was to source UK mortuary personnel to work at Ground Zero after 9/11. Her career has daisy-chained pretty much every major incident since: the Indian Ocean tsunami, 7/7, the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, Grenfell, Covid-19 and many more. Salvaging her husband’s bloodstained clothes from a hospital bin is all of a piece with recognising how people want a physical connection with a dead person they have loved. The lifeless clinical jargon that describes what is left of a miscarried foetus as “the retained products of conception” tells us that something is deeply amiss with the world-view of a medical establishment eager to sideline the humanity of an unborn child – once again, for understandable and even compassionate reasons. Whether or not you have a clear metaphysical view of the foetus as a person, it should be possible to grant that “products of conception” is a chilling and reductive way to speak of what has lived in the womb.

When the Dust Settles

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.