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New York Times
a day ago
- General
- New York Times
How to Survive a Crisis
Lucy Easthope describes herself as 'the last responder.' When disaster strikes, emergency workers rush in to deliver aid. But Dr. Easthope, a visiting professor of mass fatalities and pandemics at the University of Bath in England, tells me that her specialty is what comes after. She has spent 24 years helping people recover from catastrophes like the Sept. 11 attacks, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and the London subway bombings in 2005. Her many tasks include working in the rubble retrieving remains and personal effects, advising on cleanup and reconstruction, and helping stricken communities mend. In her upcoming book, 'Come What May: Life-Changing Lessons for Coping With Crisis,' Dr. Easthope writes about what a life in emergency management has taught her about weathering difficult times. She shared her insights on how to deal with everyday loss and calamities like death, a bad diagnosis, divorce or being fired. When she arrives on the scene of a disaster, the first thing Dr. Easthope does is write down every single thing that has happened, no matter how small: the collapsed bridge, but also the destroyed community garden. This is called an impact assessment. When something bad happens, she said, we can all benefit from making our own impact assessment. Write down everything that's affected by the event, whether it's physical, psychological or logistical, she said. This can help you understand what you have been through, how it is affecting you in all realms of your life and what is or isn't fixable. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Telegraph
11-05-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
I'm a national emergency planner. This is how I cope in a personal crisis
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.
Times
29-04-2025
- Climate
- Times
How to prepare for a power outage
The idea of being left completely without power — and, in effect, having your day-to-day existence reverting back hundreds of years in an instant — sounds like something out of a disaster movie. And yet, it was reality for tens of millions of people in Spain and Portugal yesterday and today when a huge outage brought both of the Iberian peninsula to a near-standstill, grounding planes, halting public transport, and forcing hospitals to suspend routine operations. Spain's interior ministry declared a national emergency, deploying 30,000 police across the country to keep order, as governments from the two countries convened emergency cabinet meetings. REN, Portugal's national grid operator, blamed the weather and a 'rare atmospheric phenomenon'. This, it said, had been caused by extreme temperature variations in recent days which, in turn, caused 'anomalous oscillations' in very high voltage lines in the Spanish grid, a process engineers described as 'induced atmospheric vibration'. Every home in Europe should have a three-day crisis survival kit, including bottled water, canned food, a torch and supplies of toilet paper, the European Union said last month. So what can you do, if anything, to be prepared for a sudden power outage — caused either by freak weather phenomena, a hacking attack by a hostile power, or simply a technology failure? • What caused the power outage in Spain and Portugal? We asked three British disaster professors how they have prepared in their own homes. Professor Lucy Easthope, Britain's leading disaster expert, is a prolific lecturer, author and government adviser on emergency planning and disaster recovery. Dr Sarita Robinson, nicknamed Dr Survival, lectures on the psychology of survival at the University of Central Lancashire. Plus, Professor Ilan Kelman is professor of disasters and health at University College London. Easthope (@LucyGoBag on X) says your go bag should contain what you would take 'if somebody said to you, 'We need to get you out now, you've got 15 minutes to pack.'' Her bag mirrors a 'weekend mini break bag, but with extra things in'. It has a phone charger, a battery pack, underwear, a wash bag, a spare pair of glasses, headache pills and a bottle of water. Kelman's advice is to keep at hand a money belt with cash and a passport, as bank cards may not work in a crisis. Robinson's bag is in her car, with an extra set of clothes, a foil survival blanket, a small torch and food for 24 hours. 'It's basically thinking, if I break down on some remote Scottish hillside and my phone is out of charge, would I have enough to get me through the night?' She adds: 'Parents of young children have a go bag. It's just called a nappy bag. Don't overthink it.' Because Kelman lives in a flat without a garden, he decided not to have a generator, which comes with a risk of fire or carbon monoxide poisoning. Nor does he have a power bank, which will eventually run out. In a long power cut 'I'm assuming that I won't have my phone or my laptop'. To charge your phone up to four times, the consumer website Which? recommends the INIU Power Bank 22.5W Fast Charging 20,000mAh (£24.74, Robinson has a 'tiny generator, the sort of thing you take camping'. Which? suggests the battery-powered Anker portable power station, which costs £189 from Amazon and can be charged with a solar charger. The manufacturer claims it can power a mini fridge for five hours. Petrol generators start from £200 and diesel-powered ones from £400, Which? says. Easthope keeps hers in a store in the garden. 'It has to be well ventilated,' she says. 'It's terribly, terribly embarrassing to admit we run monthly generator drills in House Easthope.' • Spain-Portugal power outage live: what you need to know If you fit solar panels and a home battery, ensure that the battery will still work in a power cut. Not all do. A whole house back-up power system like EcoFlow can take your property (or camper van) off grid, but they start from £4,190. The mobile phone network may fail in a blackout; so will landlines, if they have been switched to phone calls over broadband, as has happened in much of the UK. A wind-up radio, ideally with solar power as well, such as the Duronic Apex (£19.99, Amazon), is your best friend for emergency updates, Easthope says. Robinson has several bottles that can purify any water (from £16.99, 'It's useful on holidays too, for cutting plastic waste when you can't trust the water.' Kelman and Easthope both keep large bottles of water at home. If the power cuts out, water supply often stops too as pumps cease. 'Then immediately stop flushing your loos,' Easthope says. You can flush with a bucket of non-drinking water instead. Experts recommend having food for at least 72 hours. Include cereals, nuts and dried fruit, meals that do not need cooking and treats. When the pandemic loomed, Robinson was ready with the essentials but her husband noticed the 'nice things' were missing. 'He went to the shop for crisps and chocolate. Else we would have been totally miserable.' Stock food that you would eat, she adds — their tins of Fray Bentos pies never got eaten in lockdown. A small gas camping stove with spare canisters and matches is a useful back-up cooker, Robinson says. Which? recommends the Coleman FyreStorm PCS (£79.99, Amazon). A Kelly Kettle can boil water in three minutes using only twigs and pine cones as fuel (its base camp kit costs £99.95, while a Biolite CampStove 2 does the same while also converting the heat into electricity to charge your phone (£138.99, 'A common question is: can you use a camping stove indoors? You can, but ensure there's a good amount of ventilation,' Which? advises. Or use your gas barbecue outside. 'The world feels more terrifying when it's dark,' says Easthope, who has solar lamps, rechargeable lamps and hurricane lanterns. Disaster experts 'are not thrilled with candles' because of the fire risk, she says. According to Which?, the Nebo Big Larry 2 torch (£14.99, and the Black Diamond head torch (£16.96, both last over eight hours. Remember spare batteries or buy a wind-up torch. Robinson has a life axe, also called an escape hammer, in her car to cut seatbelts and break the window if she becomes trapped in an accident. None of the professors have weapons. 'Looting and rioting are what we call a disaster myth. We see very low levels of that in real disasters,' Easthope says. 'You see high levels of hunkering down rather than rapid societal breakdown.' Prepare a month's extra supply of prescription medication and a first-aid kit. More importantly, do a first-aid course. 'More and more we're seeing a longer delay with help coming. That's a worthwhile investment. It's a lovely quirky Christmas present for a teenager,' says Easthope, who has put both her children through first-aid courses. Her 12-year-old has also done a survival course and her nine-year-old is training to be a swimming lifeguard. 'Know thy neighbour,' Kelman says. Survival is 'all about knowing each other's needs and supporting each other.' One of the 'most important things', Easthope says, is to talk through your disaster plan as a household. What would you do in a flood or a house fire? How will you get back together if you are separated? As a start, the UK government has a campaign with advice on how to prepare for an emergency. The US government has a good website on preparing your children ( This article was updated from a version first published on December 15, 2023 Are you prepared for an unexpected disaster, or would you do so? What would you stock up on? Tell us below Find more daily Property & Home content here
The Guardian
29-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Cash, emergency food and wind-up radios: How to survive a power outage
If the lights went out in your home or office, on your train home, or in your local supermarket – would you know what to do? That question became more urgent this week, after almost the entire Iberian peninsula suffered a mass electricity blackout, leaving tens of millions across Spain and Portugal without power. As a result of the two countries' outage on Monday, millions were left without the means to get home from work, take out cash, buy food or in some cases escape lifts that were stuck between floors. Both nations declared states of emergency. While that event came out of the blue, governments all over Europe have for some time been urging their citizens to be more prepared for an apocalyptic roll call of potential crises: power outages, extreme weather events, pandemics or even military attacks. As the recent power failure at Heathrow showed, what begins as one small event – in that case, a fire at an electricity substation – can have immense global consequences. EU advice issued last month urged citizens to stockpile at least 72 hours' worth of food, water and other essentials to help them cope in a potential future crisis. The UK government, too, launched a campaign last March called Prepare to encourage Britons to be ready in case of emergency. It advises signing up for emergency alerts, planning your household escape route, and stocking up on urgent supplies, among other things. Is it time to panic? No, says Lucy Easthope, one of Britain's leading experts on emergency planning and disaster recovery – but it is wise to be more aware of our vulnerability. 'Certainly, things are [currently] quite geopolitically unstable, and there's a lot going on climatically. But if you were an emergency planner, these risks were always there, [it's just] there was a slight lull in people's awareness of it.' Preparing for future calamity can still carry a stigma – 'even I'm afraid of looking a bit bonkers', admits Easthope – but while 'these are not end times', she says, it is still worth knowing you would be able to cope if something went suddenly wrong. She has a cupboard full of essentials – torches, a first aid kit, dried food, a can opener – and a 'go bag' packed with daily essentials like a phone charger, battery pack, underwear and washbag and some medication. 'People [used to] say to me, this is ridiculous, you're stirring up fear,' she says. But increasingly, 'people want to understand this, and the knowledge dispels some of the fear.' Ian Freeborn, one of the founders of the Live Off Grid network, which advises those living self-sufficient lifestyles, says: 'If you can make sure your phone is charged that is half the battle these days,' he says. 'So that might mean having a small solar setup that can charge your phone, or certainly a USB power bank. 'The main thing is to keep it charged in any eventuality – then it's a backup to keep me going for a couple of days at least.' Secondly, he says, keep some cash to hand. 'If the card machines aren't working, people can't get food and water, essentials. At least, having a bit of cash, you'll be able to go to the shop.' Angela Terry, an environmental scientist who advises on clean technology and staying safe in weather and other crises, advises that everyone should have a 'blackout box' comprising several days' worth of food, torches and batteries, medicines and a first aid kit. 'Also, put in a pack of cards or something to keep your entertained. We don't have to rely on screens all the time.' And if you're stuck for emergency gift ideas, she says, 'Honestly, solar or wind-up radios are a really good idea.'
