BATON ROUGE, La. — Gulf Coast credit unions prepping disaster plans Tuesday for Hurricane Ike were warned by this state's top credit union examiner that "there are lessons to be learned" about taking seriously early registration for emergency communication networks.
In assessing the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav, Sidney Seymour, the lead examiner for the Louisiana Office of Financial Institutions, said he has already conveyed his concerns to his counterparts in Texas, Ike's latest target, about missteps of some Louisiana CUs that didn't register for the Government Emergency Telecommunication Service or the Wireless Priority Service designed to keep crisis lines open.
Two other lessons learned, he said, are in altering messaging procedures for a new special TeleSpan phone conference network developed by the Louisiana Credit Union League, "which worked beautifully except for one glitch on retrieving the latest message." Also, he reminded CUs to make sure that when a branch is closed that notice is posted onsite where members can obtain services.
With scattered power outages still a problem and backup systems in place, all Louisiana CUs, he said, "are now operating though there may be a few" with limited services. Meanwhile, CUNA Group in Madison said "submitted losses from CUNA Mutual policyholders will likely end up to be less than $1 million from Gustav."
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