A crowd gathered before lights dimmed in the Greenbrier Valley Theatre on Tuesday, November 7, for a special screening on the critically acclaimed documentary “The Flood.”
Winner of the 2017 WV Filmmakers’ Best Documentary Short Award, the film features White Sulphur Springs, the effects of the 2016 flood, and the strength of the human spirit during recovery.
The story begins the same way as the day of the flood: the rain starts to fall, warnings systems ring, and emergency responders scrambled to help as many people as possible. The focus then zooms in from the catastrophe brought to the entire region to the story of the Scotts, who lost a wife and mother, Belinda Scott. The story is devastating, and the agony of Belinda Scott’s husband, Ronnie, viscerally cuts through even the hardest heart.
Also featured are the recovery efforts and the impact of volunteer groups, both local and those from across the country. After the destruction, citizens and organizations of White Sulphur Springs gathered together, beginning work on Hope Village, a group of 42 new homes to help those dislocated by the water, including Ronnie Scott.
Directed by Mark Trent and executive produced by Josh Baldwin, the film is not yet publicly available. Following the screening, Baldwin and Trent took questions from the crowd about Hope Village, the filmmaking process, and updates to the current situation in flood recovery.
“It was hard for us to find out what kinds of threads in these stories to showcase,” said Baldwin. “There are a lot of heroes throughout this film.”
Remaining applications for flood relief number between 180 and 200 in Greenbrier County. The fluctuating number is a result of relief organizations being contacted by victims even now for the first time, over a year after the flood itself.
“What’s interesting is that we still get calls from people at least every week that have never come forward and asked for help,” said Maggie Hutchison, a committee member for Homes for White Sulphur Springs. “I’ve had two or three within the last five weeks … and I’m not the person that gets those calls.”
They also provided an update to the end cards of the film, a commonly used technique at the end of documentary films to provide updates to the content months or years after filming has been completed. Less than a year after the film had been completed, the amount of donated money, volunteered time, and organizational involvement with recovery has drastically increased.
“Some of these end graphics are no longer [accurate], the numbers are even higher,” Baldwin said. “The hundred thousand hours of donated time, you could probably quadruple that now.”
Read more in the Thursday, November 8, edition of The West Virginia Daily News.
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