I'm a national emergency planner. This is how I cope in a personal crisis

Telegraph

11-05-2025

Lucy Easthope, 46, walked through her front door in 2009, leaned her back against her hallway wall and slid down to the floor, overwhelmed with grief. Her blood pressure had plummeted, her legs had given way – a response she'd only ever seen happen in films. She'd just been in hospital, where she'd been told that she'd had a miscarriage and was overwhelmed with grief.
Her reaction to the personal crisis was dramatically different to her response to the national crises she faces head on through her role as an emergency planner. 'You have to show that you are not going to be a terrible wreck,' the Liverpudlian tells me from her home in Shropshire.
And for good reason – Easthope has formed part of the response to almost every disaster involving British citizens over the last few decades: 9/11, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the 2005 London Underground bombings, the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, the Salisbury poisonings in 2018, the Covid pandemic and the 2024 Southport stabbings, to name a few.
Her job involves either preparing, often sitting in her office planning for future emergencies, or responding, which can involve providing immediate on-site response, advising the most senior figures in government and supporting communities long after an event has left the news cycle.
It's a role – taken up after achieving a law degree, a PhD in medicine and master's degree in disaster management – that makes her uniquely well placed to navigate personal crisis, though you 'would be a robot' if you could have the same measured response when crisis hits at home, which Easthope has also seen much of, including five miscarriages (she went on to have two children, aged 10 and 14) and her father's death in 2023.
But that doesn't mean that her career can't help to translate into coping with personal tragedy. 'We make big, long lists of all the things that can go wrong in the world and then work out what to do about them,' Easthope writes in her new book, Come What May: Life-Changing Lessons for Coping with Crisis. 'We think about the winter in the spring.' Here's how you can apply her principles to get through personal crises and momentary disasters.
1. Crises happen to all of us – but planning is crucial
None of us can really ever know how we will react until disaster strikes but there are small things you can do to prepare for a situation.
As an emergency planner, Easthope painstakingly plans for the worst, then reviewing those plans so they're ready when national disaster strikes, whether it's a collapsed bridge or unexploded ordnance. But she also applies the same approach to her children's school calendars, planning with military precision and keeping an eye for any trouble ahead.
While you don't need to devote hours to imagining every emergency that you could face, it can be helpful to prepare for the two big things, Easthope says. These are being stuck in your home or not being able to get home, which recently happened to tens of millions of people across Spain and Portugal, when the countries lost power for 10 hours.
If you're stuck at home, you need to make sure you have everything that you could need. 'You want light, so the charged torches and the charged hurricane lamps,' she says. She urges against using candles because of the fire risk they pose.
'You want food and snacks – anything you can make without cooking,' she adds. 'Everyone always adds in, rightly so, the board games and playing cards.' Easthope keeps all of these emergency items in a cupboard at home.
Leaving the house in a hurry, or being left stranded, is another common crisis, whether a result of a power outage, car breakdown or cancelled train. 'Think about things you'd grab if you had to leave home now in a hurry – perhaps tonight and tomorrow's medication. I always have a phone and phone charger.' She also recommends adding shoes – 'I have seen many people exit their house in their socks' – a spare house key, first aid kit, thermals and insurance documents to a disaster 'go bag'.
2. Be ready for what comes after the immediate crisis
Regardless of the disaster – whether it sweeps the nation like a pandemic or terrorist attack, or is personal such as widowhood or pregnancy loss – they can all be understood under the framework of the 'disaster recovery graph', originally created by American scholars around 70 years ago.
It shows that, soon after a disaster, there is an upward slope, representing an improvement in feelings, followed by a crash and eventually a gentle incline, Easthope explains. 'It's not a grief cycle (like 'two weeks on Wednesday you'll be angry') but it's a helpful explainer for what's inevitable after a major event.'
The phase immediately after a national disaster or personal loss is often known as the 'honeymoon phase', according to this framework, Easthope says. It's a period full of hugs, compassion and an outpouring of support.
For the person at the centre of the crisis, this can cause a flood of oxytocin (the love hormone), but it's followed by a slump, she explains. The slump is often a time of anger, distress and pain. 'It goes back and forth and it's not a failure if you slide back down,' Easthope says.
In her work, Grenfell Tower is a physical manifestation of the slump. 'The skeleton of the tower, shrouded in white material, still stands, haunting the skyline', Easthope writes. 'This disaster is one of the few I have seen where there was no honeymoon. It hurtled straight into utter misery and despair.'
'We did a big public meeting [in Southport] in December about the slump because what people want is to hear that each month it will get better and you're delivering the reverse – really it's going to get harder, for example often after a first anniversary.'
But, finally, there is an up tick when things should get better. Though, in the case of Grenfell, 'any up tick will always be perilously fragile', she says.
The graph challenges the myth that you will go from a difficult time to a really great time in the aftermath of any loss, she says. It's been a revelation for people because it helps people make sense of what's going on, Easthope says.
3. Don't fall victim to wishful thinking
In the face of a crisis, it's important not to fall victim to excessive wishful thinking, or 'hopium' as Easthope calls it. It's been a common failure in many national incidents, such as the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, which officials had hoped would be a handleable weather event.
'Hopium fills the ears with cloth,' Easthope writes. 'It is ultimately perhaps best described as an over-estimation of the positives of a situation.'
That doesn't mean she's immune herself. 'With the miscarriages, you sit there Googling stories of people who've been told they miscarried but, in fact, there was a hidden baby in their uterus,' she says. 'I'm very in love with hope but I also want people to be very realistic.
'You need to be prepared for the reasonable worst case scenario, so for somebody that could be: 'A lot of colleagues are up for redundancy but I'm pretty hopeful it won't be me.' OK, but we need to talk about what to do if it is you,' she says.
To avoid it, she recommends considering how you would handle difficult news or a critical incident – whether a job loss, power cut, sudden illness or need to rush to hospital – and discussing it out loud with your household to create a plan of how you would respond.
4. Understand that loved ones will process things in different ways
Shock and grief and ultimately coming to some form of peace after a crisis can manifest in different ways among different people, Easthope notes. 'It's very divisive sometimes in families', she notes, when different family members often reach these stages at different points.
Easthope's father Bob Payne, a woodwork teacher, died suddenly in April 2023. 'My mum says it took her a very long time, probably a year, which sounds bonkers for a very rational woman, to realise he wasn't going to reappear, like maybe this was some kind of really dark prank, maybe he's testing me, maybe he'll pop back,' she says.
When it comes to working through grief as a family, 'you're looking all the time for little shoots of growth and joy', she says.
'The moments I see pure joy in my mum, for example, are to do with the grandchildren. So often, [it's that idea of] life goes on,' Easthope explains. 'In men's mental health, it's often growing or making things, or taking on an animal as a reason to sort of keep going and looking up.'
She watches out for the moment when bereaved people can 'really properly laugh' for the first time since the loss, as a sign that they are making their way through the crisis. 'It might be the day after, it might be a year after,' she notes.
Come What May by Lucy Easthope is published by Hodder Press on 15th May and available for pre-order (Hardback, £20)
Six hacks so you're always prepared for a crisis
1. Prepare a disaster 'go bag'
It should contain all of the basics for if you need to move in a hurry. A phone charger, spare house key, medication, underwear, non-perishable snacks, bottled water and insurance documents. Think about any pets too – the RSPCA has advice on their website for a pet emergency plan. Keep the bag in a designated place and check the contents regularly.
2. Have a plan for short power outages
Keep your phone charged and consider investing in battery packs. Have torches accessible and extra batteries. Invest in thermals and pick up jumpers and sweatshirts at charity shops.
3. Start daily breathing exercises
The aim is to slow the physical symptoms of anxiety and calm ourselves down. At times of stress, we often take shallow breaths. Try breathing exercises every day so they are second nature when you need them.
4. Don't spiral
You might find yourself in a spiral during a crisis, looking for reasons something has happened and demanding to know why things are so unfair. Get a handle on this reaction and accept there is no reason and it is unfair. This doesn't mean you should stop finding out about the event and asking for apologies or learnings later on.
5. Go outside
In the aftermath of a crisis, get outdoors – scrunch bare feet into grass or sit among some trees. Studies evaluating the benefits of immersing ourselves in nature have shown positive psychological effects, such as a drop in blood pressure and improved immune function.
6. Stay alert for scamming and fraud
In the hours after a weather emergency or flood, new scams start to circulate. No area innovates faster than fraud.