I'd definitely recommend this book (I've already told my dad to read it). It is hard to read and very sad at times but there is a lot of hope and promise there too and the stories of so many people who are out there fighting to do better and to make disaster recovery stronger and more community focused than it is now.

One deeply saddening example is Easthope’s description of distressed children who lived near Grenfell Tower. Looking out of their bedroom window, some of the children saw the silhouettes of police officers carrying large bags and assumed they were bodies. 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. Lucy Easthope is a UK expert and adviser on emergency planning and disaster recovery. [2] She is a Professor in Practice of Risk and Hazard at the University of Durham, and co-founder of the After Disaster Network at the university. [3] [4] She is also a Visiting Professor in Mass Fatalities and Pandemics at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, a researcher at the Joint Centre for Disaster Research at Massey University, a former Senior Fellow of the Emergency Planning College, and a member of the Cabinet Office National Risk Assessment Behavioural Science Expert Group. [1] [3] [5]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. 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. Of course, things don’t always work out the way they are planned for, and the author identifies where mistakes were made. The way in which different countries and cultures prepare for and deal with the aftermath of disaster was particularly intriguing. 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. I'm a disaster expert – and it helped me get through my own ( BBC News Outlook Podcast, March 2022)

It’s incredible to know that families would have multiple funerals for the same person, as more and more fragments were identified and released.I know I will find it impossible to tell the man I love what I have seen. The words stopped forming on my palate a long time ago. The hardest part of working in a disaster is going home. But something about the notion of them and us has shifted since the pandemic. Life doesn’t simply carry on around the suffering as it once did. It is universal, less hidden; we are all disaster survivors now. We will feel the effects of Covid-19 for many years to come. My one criticism though is that the author has a strange air of knowing everything and being better than everyone else. In almost every chapter, there was an instance of how she planned for a very specific event and everyone brushed it off.. and then very soon after (or even the same day!), that very disaster happened. I am sure that this did happen, but it felt a bit ridiculous that it kept happening. Easthope writes of attempting to identify the remains of British soldiers repatriated from Iraq when there were only feet left behind. These, she says, were sometimes still wearing strangely undersized desert boots. She discovered that some British soldiers had bought the ill-fitting boots from their American counterparts and writes: “I have never been able to put out of my mind that they were sent to war without the boots that they needed.” a b Reisz, Matthew (27 March 2022). "When the Dust Settles by Lucy Easthope review – what to do when disaster strikes". The Observer . Retrieved 27 November 2022. When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, Lucy Easthope’s phone starts to ring.

Thompson, Jessie (4 January 2022). "World Book Day: The best non-fiction books to read in 2022, from Margaret Atwood to Matthew Perry". Evening Standard . Retrieved 27 November 2022. Despite the bleak subject matter, this book is a beacon of hope in an ocean of despair, a reminder of the resilience of the human spirit. It is written in a conversational style and is recommended for readers interested in the dynamics of global disaster management. 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.An extraordinary memoir about raw humanity in the face of disaster. Easthope writes beautifully about the importance of the small things in these huge, defining moments and proves that, when the dust settles, with care and compassion we can rebuild from the ashes. This is an essential, uplifting read, brimming with humanity, humility and humour. Easthope’s respect for the deceased, including those who are unaccounted for, is evidenced throughout the book. 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. I enjoyed how Lucy brings in touches of her personal life and how disasters from her childhood and adolescence like Hillsborough influenced her career as a disaster expert, as well as how her career and the disasters she dealt with interplayed with her personal life. As someone who is a widow, who has been through life-changing loss and the mortuary inquest experience, I was very moved by the thoughtfulness and humanity that Lucy had in her work dealing with victims and their families. I was particularly moved by the chapter describing setting up the mortuary and dealing with families of veterans coming from Iraq.