2022-03-29
39 分钟Hello and welcome to the Outlook podcast, introducing you to people from around the world living extraordinary lives.
I'm Anu Anand.
Now, whenever there's a catastrophic event somewhere in the world, it's likely that my guest today will get a phone call.
Lucy Easthope is a disaster recovery expert, and in the aftermath of earthquakes, terrorist attacks, conflicts and plane crashes, she helps identify bodies, support survivors and comfort the bereaved.
She also goes the extra mile to make sure seemingly invaluable and tattered possessions belonging to the victims are returned with sensitivity.
And she advises governments and organizations on how to improve their response.
So I've worked on September 11, 2001, the 2002 Bali bombings, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, the July 7, 2005 bombings here in London, and the Salisbury poisonings, the fire in the Grenfell Tower COVID pandemic, and currently the Ukraine crisis.
Lucy often finds herself in grisly and distressing situations.
And a heads up that we'll be hearing about some of that in this interview.
It's given her a unique insight into what people need during the worst moments of their lives and what helps them heal.
So when she went through a series of devastating losses in her own life, she needed all of those disaster management skills to cope.
Lucy grew up in the 1980s in Liverpool in northwest England, and says disaster has always felt pretty close at hand.
I'm born a month early because my mum goes to get some antibiotics for a urinary tract infection and the doctor prescribes ones that are not right for pregnant women or babies and her placenta abrupts.
So I'm an emergency Caesarean, where both she and my lives are in danger and she has to be immediately operated.
And so I was born very early, but also, I think, very aware almost of risk and drama all around me and within the family.
There's always been the discussion that I am the way I am from the earliest of ages.
But also we're a family that I think is quite interested in disasters and failure.
Anyway, so my grandfather had been at the side of the River Mersey in an engineering job when the Thetis, a submarine, had submerged in the port there and couldn't be access.
And 99 people had died in that incident.
So as a family, actually, I think we talked about risk and disaster quite differently.