Save Our Towns shows devastating flood scenes and a city that took charge of its fate

1 Mar 2019

A marker sits in front of a stone wall and American flags pushed into the ground in front of a white house. — A memorial in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, marks the height of the flooding that devastated the town in June 2016.

Emergency responders couldn’t get to some residents fast enough to prevent deaths during floods in 2016, and city leaders in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, weren’t prepared to cope with catastrophe. But city hall mobilized to deal with 75 destroyed homes and other devastation.

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The Small Town Big Number segment looks at the much-reviewed bestseller Our Towns by Deborah and James Fallows. The expert tip comes from Jerry Moles, an agriculture consultant in Southwest Virginia and a proponent of big, regional land-care projects. The Marion update focuses on Emory & Henry College’s impact on housing.

Save Our Towns is produced by Outreach and International Affairs and distributed to mayors and town managers throughout Appalachian Virginia and beyond. Save Our Towns is now being aired on two cable stations in the region:

Lynchburg-based ALIVE TV on the Shentel cable network, covering portions of Virginia and West Virginia, airs Save Our Towns in the evenings Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday; afternoons Wednesday and Friday; and Saturday mornings.

Appalachian Regional Community Television is also airing the programs on its stations in Lebanon and Wise in Virginia and Jenkins, Kentucky. Airtime is Thursdays, 1 p.m., with episodes repeated on weekends. ARC TV is carried on cable systems Comcast, Shentel, Overmountain Cable, and Cable Plus.

Past episodes can be viewed at the Save Our Towns website.