SYLMAR, Calif. – A major brush fire nearly took out Olive View Employees CU here over the weekend, but an alert policeman managed to save the structure.
“We almost burned down,” Barbara Felix, CEO of the $30 million credit union, told Credit Union Journal Monday afternoon. “We are on the campus of Olive View hospital. The whole area around us was devastated. One freeway off ramp away was a mobile home park that lost nearly 500 homes.”
The “Sayre” fire, which started late Friday night, is the Sylmar area’s second blaze in a month, Felix reported. She said the credit union is in the back part of the Olive View UCLA Medical Center campus, in a bungalow, up against foothills. “The building next to me is fine, but the bungalow cater corner to ours was destroyed. Our building actually caught on fire – the window next to my desk in my office is shattered from the heat of a bush outside that caught on fire. It is boarded up today.”
A wooden door that goes to the CU’s basement caught on fire. Felix said a policeman saw the flames and hit the door with an axe. “Otherwise the building would have gone up,” she said.
Olive View Employees CU’s files are remotely backed up every four hours from a location in Salt Lake City. Felix said it was operating on generators Monday and probably will be for six months because its power plant burned down.
“I came in Sunday to assess damage,” Felix said. “A generator was installed for our row of bungalows, and we made sure the ATMs were back on line. All five of our employees came in today [Monday] in jeans, t-shirts and tennis shoes to clean up. It was very important we were open today. It took three hours to clean up, then we opened and had a line. People were very worried their credit union had burned down. We had payroll coming in, and we were able to get that processed.”
“We lost a repossessed car that was in the back of the building,” she added. “It is nothing but a charred piece of metal. It made the news – when we were watching TV we saw it.”
