Though Hurricane Matthew has gone out to sea, the effects of it continue to endanger communities with record floods up and down the east coast of North Carolina.
Mike Lord, president/CEO of the $33.7 billion SECU in Raleigh, N.C., said Monday of the credit union’s 257 branches, 19 were impacted by Hurricane Matthew. On Sunday, more than 50 branches had no power.
Even though seven branches have no power, employees are managing to serve members. Twelve branches, however, are closed because of flood problems.
The hurricane dumped six to 16 inches of rain throughout eastern North Carolina. All of that rain has flowed into 10 rivers and creeks, which is causing floods in towns like Goldsboro and Washington where SECU was forced to close three branches on Monday.
“The aftermath of this storm is extremely dangerous, as many inland areas are expecting record flooding in the coming days,” North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory warned. He also noted that rivers and streams have not yet crested and may not for several days.
One SECU employee and his family had to be rescued because of the fast rising water that flooded their home in Johnson County.
“There is a stream behind his house and the water came up so quickly that it flowed into his garage and into his house,” Lord said. About 10 inches of water flooded the apartment of another employee.
Lord doesn’t know yet how many SECU employees have been affected by the hurricane, but he expects more will be before the flood finally subsides.
In addition to the branches, Hurricane Matthew also affected 189 ATMs out of SECU’s 1100 ATMs, Lord said. Most of those ATMs are not working because of power outages and a few are not working because of flooding.
“All in all, we’re in very good shape, frankly, with 19 branches affected down from the 52 branches that had power on Sunday,” Lord said. “They have made progress in getting the power back on in a lot of areas, but there are still plenty of areas where the power is out, the flooding is high and there are a lot of roads that are washed out or impassable.”
As of Monday, CUNA Mutual Group in Madison, Wis., said it received from one Florida credit union five claims that were all for minor water damage.
“Most of the concerns from credit unions over the weekend were related to power outages, but our understanding is power has been restored to most areas,” Phil Tschudy, media and reputation strategist for CUNA Mutual Group, said. “Prior to the storm, we activated our Customer Disaster Response Team and made outbound calls to all credit union customers we identified in the path of Matthew. We sent follow-up emails with complete claims contact information and instructions to those customers, should it become necessary for them to contact us.”
