A heartbreaking documentary by billionaire Richard Branson's son Sam reveals the true extent of the devastation caused by Hurricane Irma - and resilient islanders' desperate attempts to rebuild their lives.
Sam Branson returned to Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands where he grew up to film the devastation and document how the community is pulling together to rebuild the island and their lives.
In one segment he shows how one 13-year-old girl set up a school in her home for children whose parents lost everything they owned as well as the roofs over their heads.
As he drives around the island, greeting old friends, Sam is reduced to tears on numerous occasions as he sees two pals’ houses uprooted and blown down cliffs, one man’s car on its roof, and hundreds of homes in ruins.Florida man films his Miami beach-front apartment being battered by Hurricane Irma winds as people tell him 'get out of there!'But the people of Virgin Gorda are surprisingly optimistic, setting up a makeshift canteen in a church, beginning renovation projects and one woman telling Sam: “Everything is gone... but I have my life."
The filmmaker admits he “can’t stop crying” as he meets a teenage girl who is teaching five students at her home.
The youngster, who admits to being a ‘school freak’, said: “I don’t really like to see kids just lingering, playing, don’t do nothing. I made it to myself that I would… do it right for each of them.Sam’s friend, identified only as Gary, tells the camera he has served in Iraq and Afghanistan and said the island is like a war zone in terms of collateral damage.
He said: “It’s like a nuclear weapon has gone off.”
Everywhere Sam goes on the island he meets people whose lives are in tatters.
A woman called JoJo, who Sam says is an old friend, arrives back at the area where her home once stood for the first time as the camera crew gets there.She tells him: “This thing is total devastation. Everything is gone. My home is gone, my vehicle. I don’t even have a place to stay, nowhere to sleep. But I have my life.”
He speaks to a man who says he has lived through three hurricanes but Irma was “the most terrible one, it was never like this, this one was intense”.
Another man tearfully describes how he and his wife sheltered in a closet, desperately holding the door closed as the hurricane whipped around themA grandmother admits she is “ashamed” to be sharing a bedroom with her daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren after losing everything - she tells Sam she doesn’t even have a pot to cook in.
She adds that her two sons, who live in America, phoned her screaming and asked: “Ma, you ok? What happened? We see on the news everybody dead.”
Fortunately she was able to tell them: “No child, we ain’t dead.”Sam also hears about a couple with newborn triplets who were forced to hide in a shower when the hurricane hit. The father was cut by flying debris as he desperately tried to protect his babies and one of the youngsters suffered a cut on top of its head.
