Lucy Easthope Interviewed by Matthew Stadlen

The UK’s leading authority on recovering from disaster Professor Lucy Easthope looks back at her work on some of the most high-profile disasters of recent decades including 9/11, the 7/7 bombings, the Shoreham air disaster, the Indian Ocean tsunami, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Easthope has spent her life planning for disasters and working in the aftermath of disasters to better plan for future events. She is invariably called in to help when disaster occurs. She describes life behind the police tapes at disaster scenes and talks about the victims and their families and about the government briefing rooms where ‘confusion and soggy biscuits can reign supreme’. And she shows that hope, humanity, and humour can still be found in even the darkest days.

Easthope is professor in practice of risk and hazard at the University of Durham and fellow in mass fatalities and pandemics at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath.