CU Employees & Their 'Long Road Ahead' After Hurricane Michael

Three weeks after the gigantic Category 4 Hurricane Michael made landfall on Florida’s panhandle, a credit union employee rhetorically asked, “How do we recover from this?”

Bay Credit Union, in Panama City, Fla., is currently using a back-up telephone service. Two of its four locations are open. The main office and one branch are too heavily damaged to function safely for employees and members. Images of the main office damage show that it’s an entirely unusable building, with significant water and wind damage. The flooring has been removed and water stains and mold paint the ceilings and walls.

Michael Evans, Account Control Officer for Bay CU spoke with CU Times on Tuesday. Evans, his wife, two children and their dog lost everything in the storm. During the phone interview, Evans was actually stepping out of what was their home to grab a water-soaked computer with some important files he hoped to recover.

“There’s nothing left,” he said. “It’s 100% gone.”

As of now, he said he’s one of the lucky ones because his parents live not too far away and Evans and his family have a place to stay. “There are people who have no home to go to and they are forced to stay inside their damaged, wet homes,” he said. Evans and other credit union officials have said housing and reliable transportation are in dangerously short supply.

The most difficult part right now, he said, is dealing with insurance companies and the fact that nothing is normal. “Insurance companies want a lot of information and I understand that. But right now I don’t know how to mail anything or print anything. It’s just not there.”

On the day Hurricane Michael hit, Evans and his family let in two other families into their home to ride out the storm. In all, he had 16 people and a couple of dogs in their 1,800-square-foot home that day.

At the height of the storm, Evans said, “It was almost like the house was breathing. I try explaining this to people, but I’ve never seen anything like it.” Most of the roof of their home was blown off and the house is uninhabitable.

Evans said he is hand-delivering checks and the paperwork he can find to members, most of whom, he said are wandering around their neighborhoods trying to help others with the clean-up.

“I think people maybe don’t….it’s hard to express, but people don’t seem to believe or understand the devastation. It’s devastation everywhere and everybody here has lost everything,” Evans said, sometimes struggling to find the words. When you see the photos of the damage, he doesn’t appear to be hyperbolic in those statements.

Evans is thankful for the help he’s received personally from the League of Southern Credit Unions.  With a shaky voice, Evans said, “I want to be clear – I love the league and what they’ve done for me and my friends.” He continued, “There are no words to describe what they’ve meant to us.”

Besides his workplace, the main office of Bay CU being unusable for an unknown amount of time, the small church he and his family attend was destroyed. “Answering the question ‘How are you doing?’ has been challenging,” he said. “The kind of stress this experience puts on you is not normal.”

Evans does see a light at the end of this recovery effort, “But, man, that’s months away. Right now, the only thing I have to give is my time….and that’s what I’ll give to anyone who needs it.”

Credit union officials in Florida are asking that people please give to CUAid.coop to help employees and their families rebuild and recover.

In the days ahead, CU Times will be sharing more stories and images from credit union employees recovering from the storm.