This exclusive interview appeared in our Spring 2024 box, which was curated around the theme of LOSS.
Lucy Easthope is the UK's leading disaster recovery expert and her book When the Dust Settles draws back the curtain on a field that is largely invisible to the general public.
She's a woman of real substance: clever, direct, unbowed by hierarchy or patriarchy, both of which she encounters daily in her work, and willing to go up against the most powerful individuals and organisations when she sees mistakes being made. Her humour and humanity shine out from every page.
We spoke to Lucy in February, to find out more.
Photo: Caitlin Chescoe
We did question whether to include your book in our Spring box only because we wondered whether some of our subscribers might find the subject matter anxiety-inducing. You seem to have a remarkably cheerful disposition and you write with clarity about some pretty extreme situations that in the hands of a different narrator might be hard to stomach. Was it difficult to strike a balance between revealing the reality of your job and not frightening your readers?
It was something I gave a lot of thought to and it’s something I really hoped to get right – I was pleased when the reviews drew out that for them the balance was just right. I had a strong sense that I wanted the reader to be engaged and cheering and reflecting, definitely not fearing. I think people have also found it sense-making to have some answers to questions and also words to throw around feelings that are common after disaster.
Is your naturally cheerful outlook an essential quality for a person doing your job? How do you maintain it, if you do, over years of attending disasters and dealing with successive governments and their different priorities? What other qualities would you say are important in your line of work?
Haha, I am not always like this! But I genuinely live by the principles I talk about in the book and my articles. Life really is so precious and fragile that you do need to savour the micro joys too. I think the qualities I really value in colleagues are flexibility, compassion and empathy. We laugh at each other a lot. I am grateful to the friends and family who work hard to keep me cheery.
You talk in the book about how you have largely kept the details of your work out of your relationship with your husband, Tom. Was he surprised by anything you revealed in the book? Are you ever able to talk about your work in a meaningful way with people outside the industry?
I have absolutely loved taking the book out to festivals and events and responding to a whole new audience. Those questions have really educated me.
Tom didn’t expect to find the book as readable as he did – that was a huge compliment. He reads my articles now because his sense and his lens makes such a difference to how I get my point across.
I am so glad that I brought that aspect in, about not bringing it home to him. So many responders have messaged me to say that they did this too and so they passed the book across the table and said ‘read this’. One lady said it saved her marriage because she had a very stressful role in response and it had started to affect her home life.
Does it frustrate you that the general public are largely ignorant about emergency planning and disaster recovery? Should there be more transparency about the kinds of risks being planned for or is it better for us to be blissfully ignorant?
My world is very different after the pandemic – people are so engaged with planning and planners and I have found the reaction to the messages wonderfully overwhelming. I think there is a middle ground and it’s good to be informed and have a level of preparedness, but I don’t want anyone wasting time worrying. Life is for living – I address that specifically in ‘The Fear’ chapter.
It was striking to us that the loss experienced after a disaster is much broader than we might have imagined before reading your book. Yes, loss of life, loved ones, homes and property but also loss of privacy, safety, plans for the future and trust in authorities. Some governments seem to take these losses more seriously than others when it comes to disaster planning and recovery efforts. Which countries do this best and why do they?
I learn from them all and that’s one of the most important parts of my work. I forage for amazing case studies from every corner of the world.
A privilege of my academic work has been to win grants that have allowed me to see lots of different ways of tackling what are actually very similar problems. Some countries like the USA have enshrined protection for the bereaved and survivors of transportation disasters into law and that’s been very effective. All countries struggled and are still struggling with the pandemic.
I use the New Zealand Red Cross guidance on life after disaster literally every day (it’s the first citation in the book). Disasters have such a long, chronic tail and that’s been revelatory to many people.
The chapter on flooding felt very universal as it’s something so many places are battling with.
Often victims and their families have to wait a generation or more before anyone will admit culpability. The additional damage this causes as families fight to learn what has happened clearly has catastrophic impact.
The recent focus on the Post Office scandal shows that the general public can feel righteous anger about injustice so why aren’t we more angry about events like Grenfell? Is there anything the general public can do to support victims and their families in the years after an event like this, while they fight for
accountability, justice and truth?
Keep them at the front of your mind and stay curious and supportive. Ask more questions. Read a lot – I see a social justice book box on the horizon – about housing and building scandals, contaminated blood, the Post Office.
I am so grateful for our independent investigative journalists and the books they write. Obviously the pandemic gave much of the British public an unexpected insight into how fragile our comfortable lives actually are.
From this side, the UK government response felt reactive and chaotic, and the subsequent enquiry is doing nothing to dispel that impression. From your point of view, was the UK well prepared for a pandemic of this kind? What did we get right, what should have been done differently and are we better prepared for next time?
The plans are only as good as the training, exercising, resourcing, people and equipment alongside them and we are still not there yet. I honestly am not sure we are that much more prepared for some aspects. So I make it my mission to seek out things that are changing. I am very happy as an activist and a questioner these days.
You shared some very personal stories of loss in your own life. Was it important for you to reveal something of yourself and your private life to the reader?
Oh yes, I definitely wanted the reader and indeed my colleagues to get to know a lot more about the real me. I talk about my health and pregnancy losses and some lovely moments have come from work colleagues coming up to me and saying they did not know for all of that time.
I love walking into a room and people knowing that much detail about me and we can then just get straight to why something is important and why I am passionate about it. It’s been incredible to go to incidents since the book and people say ‘I protected the personal effects at the scene because of the book’.
By the end of the book, it feels like the approach to emergency planning at government level is going backwards. Some of this can presumably be put down to budget cuts but is there something else at play? What needs to happen if we’re to do better in the future?
People have to demand more of both national and local politics. I would love to see resources and support for more citizen preparedness too. But it’s hard to ask that of people at times of austerity and when there is a lot going on. If you do have any capacity or are looking for a change do consider volunteering. We need each other more than ever.
And finally, we will listen to news about disasters very differently from now. What is the best action we can take individually in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, here or abroad?
Firstly, manage the way you consume the news and manage down any fearful reaction. Notice that your body has been in a heightened state for four years.
Do visit my website where I put lots of articles and podcasts that I have done or liked on this issue. I also put latest advice on X. I am very active on social media and mainstream media talking about the things we can do to get ready.
Buy a good chargeable torch, keep your phone charged, talk through some emergency scenarios with your household such as if you had to leave the home in ten minutes. Check your insurance documents. Do a first aid course and a paediatric course.
Then stop worrying about it and get busy living.
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Lucy’s website is:
www.whatevernext.info
Find her on X @lucygobag