The swath of more than 100 tornadoes that swept across the plains over the weekend apparently caused little disruption or damage to credit unions, but member losses have yet to be counted, CUNA Mutual Group reported Monday.
CUNA Mutual staffers from its property division said that despite the tornadoes hitting six states, “we’ve only had a handful of reports on lost shingles, broken windows and wind damage,” said Michael Retelle, head of disaster claims for CUNA Mutual’s CUMIS Property & Casualty Claims unit.
As it has in the past, the CUMIS team used news services to watch the storms’ progress over the weekend, “and we could see that it was small municipalities where there are few credit unions that were most affected,” Retelle said.
The CUNA Mutual field team also “reached out to state leagues and individual credit unions to identify areas where the need might be greatest and perhaps areas where we’ve lost communication because of downed cell towers,” Retelle said.
Gary Jones, president/CEO of the Credit Union Association of Oklahoma, said there are no credit unions in the hardest-hit community of Woodward or in Cherokee at the Oklahoma/Kansas line.
“But let me tell you I was very heartened when we got that call from some CUNA representative and their first question, ‘Have there been any injuries to credit union employees?” said Jones. There were none.
The Kansas Credit Union Association said parts of suburban Wichita saw extensive damage but there were no reports of credit union damage. The Iowa Credit Union League also said it had no reports of damage at its member institutions.
