Though Hurricane Matthew has gone out to sea, the effects of itcontinue to endanger communities with record floods up and down theeast coast of North Carolina.

Mike Lord, president/CEO of the $33.7 billion SECU in Raleigh,N.C., said Monday of the credit union’s 257 branches, 19 wereimpacted by Hurricane Matthew. On Sunday, more than 50 branches hadno power.

Even though seven branches have no power, employees are managingto serve members. Twelve branches, however, are closed because of floodproblems.

The hurricane dumped six to 16 inches of rain throughout easternNorth Carolina. All of that rain has flowed into 10 rivers andcreeks, which is causing floods in towns like Goldsboro andWashington where SECU was forced to close three branches onMonday.

“The aftermath of this storm is extremely dangerous, as manyinland areas are expecting record flooding in the coming days,”North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory warned. He also noted that riversand streams have not yet crested and may not for several days.

One SECU employee and his family had to be rescued because ofthe fast rising water that flooded their home in JohnsonCounty.

“There is a stream behind his house and the water came up soquickly that it flowed into his garage and into his house,” Lordsaid. About 10 inches of water flooded the apartment of anotheremployee.

Lord doesn’t know yet how many SECU employees have been affectedby the hurricane, but he expects more will be before the floodfinally subsides.

In addition to the branches, Hurricane Matthew also affected 189ATMs out of SECU’s 1100 ATMs, Lord said. Most of those ATMs are notworking because of power outages and a few are not working becauseof flooding.

“All in all, we’re in very good shape, frankly, with 19 branchesaffected down from the 52 branches that had power on Sunday,” Lordsaid. “They have made progress in getting the power back on in alot of areas, but there are still plenty of areas where the poweris out, the flooding is high and there are a lot of roads that arewashed out or impassable.”

As of Monday, CUNA Mutual Group in Madison, Wis., said it received from oneFlorida credit union five claims that were all for minor waterdamage.

“Most of the concerns from credit unions over the weekend wererelated to power outages, but our understanding is power has beenrestored to most areas,” Phil Tschudy, media and reputationstrategist for CUNA Mutual Group, said. “Prior to the storm, weactivated our Customer Disaster Response Team and made outboundcalls to all credit union customers we identified in the path ofMatthew. We sent follow-up emails with complete claims contactinformation and instructions to those customers, should it becomenecessary for them to contact us.”