With evacuation orders under way across a wide area of central Pennsylvania, credit unions were closing branches early and sending staffers home as flooded roads and rain-swollen rivers – the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee – posed new dangers.
The $50 million Hershey FCU in Hummelstown said it has closed its Annville office and the Pennsylvania Credit Union Association in Harrisburg, with headquarters on the banks of the Susquehanna River near flood stage, said it was closing early Thursday and would be shuttered Friday as well. It had closed early Wednesday but reopened Thursday.
PCUA President/CEO James McCormack said the closing was ordered since “some employees were unable to make it home due to flooded roads on Wednesday and more than half could not make it to work today.”
Some 60 CUs are in the Wilkes-Barre-Lancaster-Williamstown-Scranton areas and are being impacted by weather conditions, the league said.
The PCUA noted that the Susquehanna, “which flows in front of Association headquarters, is currently projected to rise to more than 28 feet by Friday. Flood stage is 17 feet, and as of this morning, it measured 19.9 feet.”
Ed Novak, a spokesman for the Secretary of Banking “at home now with three feet of water in my basement,” said Harrisburg is among the cities seeing evacuations, with all state offices closed earlier in the day.
The Pennsylvania flooding follows by just days the damaging rampage of Hurricane Irene through the Mid-Atlantic and New England.
