Chaos and Ash records one consultant's views from the inside of some of the largest critical incidents over the past twenty-five years—many front page headliners, that stand out in the nation's memory.

From 1987 to 2012 Kendall Johnson served as traumatic stress consultant to emergency service agencies and the military. He has driven into remote locations in both wildland and urban emergencies, convoyed through fire lines, has been airlifted into disasters, and was honored to deal with some of our countries finest firefighters, law enforcement officers, and incident managers in their most trying hours.

It is within the extremes of life experience that important lessons can be learned, that character comes to the fore, and that human nature—for better and for worse—is most clearly revealed. The stories in this book are, in reality, nothing more than the stories of this particular author, within the incidents that he, fortunately or not, stumbled himself into.