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.

I am a child of the indomitable city of Liverpool, where tragedy and activism is wired into the blood. I passed by my first disaster scene when I was eight years old. My parents were teachers who spent swathes of their career in secondary schools in the deprived inner-city areas of Toxteth, Walton and Tuebrook. In March 1987, my mum had arranged a school trip to visit West Germany and we all went along for the ride. My parents, my five-year-old little sister and I were all sailing on the sister ferry of the ill-fated Herald of Free Enterprise. As we approached the place in the Channel where 155 passengers and 38 crew membersAs 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. Easthope, whether she knows it or not, is that rare thing, a genuine philosopher thinking through what she is actually doing in the mitigation of human suffering, grief and isolation. This book is more searching as an analysis of human needs and nature than a good many technical volumes on the subject.' - New Statesman

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. 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 ] 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. After an explosion or a crash, a flood or a fire – after any disaster with mass fatalities caused by accident, negligence or terrorism – there are bodies to be collected, identified and accounted for. Or parts of bodies. Appropriate obsequies are required even as lessons are absorbed in preparation for the next inevitable catastrophe.

She left work in the television industry for her job at Kenyon International, which included support for the repatriation of the remains and belongings of UK soldiers killed in the Iraq War, relocation efforts for flood survivors, and planning. [8] [9] She later worked for the Cambridge city council and then became a consultant for governments and businesses. [9]

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”. I'm a disaster expert – and it helped me get through my own ( BBC News Outlook Podcast, March 2022)

Mixes disaster-grade C.S.I. with hiraeth , a Welsh word expressing a deep longing for something that is gone" NEW YORKER 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. The poet WH Auden wrote in 1938 about how, in one part of a place, a tragedy of the most unimaginable horror can be unfolding while in another part of the same panorama, a farmer can continue to plough his field, someone else is eating “ or just walking dully along”. Life simply goes on all around the suffering. 9/11, the Bali bombings, Grenfell… Each one is seared into my brain 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'."

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. I listened to the audiobook of this and I am so glad I did. Lucy Easthope did a marvelous job narrating her book and it makes it all the more personal that it's the author reading it herself. I cannot stress how important I felt this book was. Lucy Easthope is a world leading authority on recovering from disaster and in this book she talks about her experiences during and following a variety of different disasters and events across the world. This was evident in the property left in the aftermath of the London 7/7 bombings. Easthope lists items such as Tupperware with salads inside, laptops and an unfinished PhD thesis, still being annotated up until the point when the bomb exploded. These objects are reminders that it was a normal commute until it wasn’t.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.