Abstract

Dr Lucy Easthope, senior lecturer in mass fatalities at the University of Lincoln
talks to Andrew Johnston about the challenges for government agencies and
local communities in recovering from a CBRN mass fatality incident

There is a distinct difference between the response and
recovery phases of major incidents, and that difference is
something we should all be more aware of. Recovery is
about individual and community rebuilding after an
incident, both physically and psychologically, and continues
long after the first responders and the news cameras have
packed up and gone home.
In many planning meetings there is a tendency to detail
the response phase of a major incident down to the minutia
and that is considered sufficient. With any incident, but
especially CBRNE incidents, it’s not that simple. The
response phase is finite, maybe hours, days or months, but
it will end, the recovery phase, the ‘afterwards’ be it
physical or psychological, can be infinite. Chernobyl will
always be Chernobyl!
I feel that recovery planning generally is neglected and
CBRN recovery planning is the neglected of the neglected.
There are a number of reasons for this, not least being that
there is often a mental block on Armageddon scenarios,
especially when they are put down on paper. It all just
looks too extreme so is always the ‘next job’. CBRN, even
the acronym itself, has become such a bogeyman that
many emergency planners shy away from it. My work in
mass fatality planning and community recovery suggests
that the recurring lessons so often learnt from natural
disaster recovery have parallels with CBRN incidents, and
these similarities can be used to better plan that CBRNE
recovery phase.