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

Product Information

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. But part of the book’s importance is in its insightful exploration of what human beings need to preserve their resilience. Easthope is consistently interested in the long-term rebuilding of whatever habitat has been destroyed – the internal domain of feeling and memories as much as the external. She borrows an illuminating phrase about the “furniture of self” from the sociologist Kai Erikson, and the evocative Welsh word hiraeth to describe the yearning for a lost place where we know we are at home. Human beings are embedded in place and body, their humanity is shaped around things, sights and sounds, flesh and blood. 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. a b Rees, Jasper (28 March 2022). "This memoir will do for disaster response what This Is Going to Hurt did for medicine". The Telegraph . Retrieved 27 November 2022. As one of the world's leading experts on disaster, she has been at the centre of the most seismic events of the last few decades - advising on everything from the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami to the 7/7 bombings, the Salisbury poisonings, the Grenfell fire and the COVID-19 pandemic.

As well as providing the reader with the complexities of disaster response, the book also reflects on the personal costs involved. This includes not only loss of life and serious injuries, but also the ‘furniture of self’, a term coined by sociologist Kai Erikson to describe photographs, clothing and items that hold sentimental value and make us who we are.

Help

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. 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. Entwined with these large scale catastrophes is Professor Easthope’s own experience of loss and disaster. She grew up in Liverpool and was 10 when the Hillsborough disaster occurred. On a school trip, her ferry passed by the capsized Herald of Free Enterprise. These events helped shaped her resolve to understand and assist at times of chaos and devastation. Looming in and out of view is also her own struggle with pregnancy loss. When the Dust Settles’ is an autobiographical account of Lucy Easthope’s experience in both disaster planning and post-disaster intervention. It details several high-profile disasters, including a flooding in Doncaster, the MH17 plane crash and the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster.

With profound compassion and empathy throughout, the actual work undertaken knowing what they are handling is chilling. Easthope recalls sorting limbs with boots attached, when British soldiers were returned from the war in Iraq. She also tells of gathering limbs in frantic panic after given just 30 minutes in a war zone, after a plane blown out of the sky,Mixes disaster-grade C.S.I. with hiraeth , a Welsh word expressing a deep longing for something that is gone" NEW YORKER

It’s an eerie thought, but when disaster strikes, who steps in to help? To organize others, to support the survivors, to bring the dead to their loved ones. Easthope tells of her own journey joining Kenyon, an international recognized disaster management company that are called to repatriate the dead. Along the way she provides detailed insight to an industry that is barely known. I liked the insight into the aftermath of disasters, including some aspects which I hadn't really considered before. I appreciated Lucy Easthope's personal focus on recovering personal items and centering the recovery on the survivors being able to grieve and move on in the best way for them. Never forgotten: US flags, flowers and a victim’s photograph left on the names on the National September 11 Memorial. New York City. Photograph: AlamyWilliams, Rowan (25 March 2022). "Lucy Easthope reflects on life after catastrophe". New Statesman . Retrieved 27 November 2022. 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. 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 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.