PORT ARTHUR, Texas — The Ike-battered credit unions of southeast Texas, operating all week on backup generators, skeleton staffs, no Internet and limited member service, were starting at last to get power Thursday.

“We had our Beaumont branch come on yesterday and two days before that Lumberton, but we've lost the leased building in Bridge City which is still under water,” declared Erik Shaw, president/CEO of the five-branch, $285 million Fivepoint FCU, describing himself now as a certified hurricane veteran of CU calamities.

The Port Arthur CU, fully functioning now except for the Bridge City branch, withstood Hurricane Rita in 2005 “and here we are again with a mobile branch operating at our Port Arthur office, which was destroyed by Rita,” said Shaw who spent Thursday up on the roof doing some patchwork.

“NCUA has been great about offering help but we're managing fine and we can do just about everything except issue debit cards,” said Shaw.

For its part, the NCUA said based on communication with state regulators in both Louisiana and Texas, it now lists only 12 CUs as nonoperational out of 177 CUs that were affected by Ike in total.

And among those affected, Kim Heinze, president and CEO of Mobiloil FCU in Beaumont, agreed that those backup generators saved the day. “Thank God my board had the wisdom after Rita to buy a new $140,000 generator and I know that's money that isn't earning us anything but let me tell you what a smart decision that was.”