BREA, Calif. – The headquarters of Evangelical Christian CU here took a near miss from the large “Freeway Complex” fire that burned a major portion of Orange County – one of several credit unions affected by the weekend blazes.
Jac La Tour, manager of communications and public relations for ECCU, told Credit Union Journal, “We are close to the fires that were in Brea, but our headquarters was never in danger. The fires came about three or four miles away. There is a lot of smoke and ash, but the facility is fine.”
ECCU spent Monday contacting the ministry organizations it serves to determine if any were damaged, La Tour said. Other credit unions in the area were in a similar position, including Santa Ana-based Orange County’s CU. John Tierney, OCCU’s facilities manager, reported all of the credit union’s branches survived intact. “We were really lucky. We have a branch in Yorba Linda, and we were having a grand opening celebration there on Saturday that had been scheduled to go until 2 p.m. About 1:20 the wind shifted and we were getting smoke and ash, so we shut it down. We ended up with a number of extra sandwiches and bottles of water. Our branch manager took the food at water to the evacuation center at a local high school.”
SchoolsFirst FCU, also headquartered in Santa Ana, is trying to get word to any members who might have suffered loss or damage through its website, said Derek Longshore, vice president of marketing and public relations. “We are still compiling information on members who were affected. We want to be able to reach out to them and find out what assistance they need. When things like this happen, of course it is very difficult to get in contact with people, so we are putting information on our website asking them to contact us. We will always have an assistance program if they need loans to go to hotels, or whatever they need. We have a pretty tight-knit community here.”
SchoolsFirst has a branch in Anaheim that was evacuated on Saturday. Longshore said it did not sustain any damage and was open Monday. “Business as usual. We have 26 total branches, and that was the only one that was close to the fires.”
Wescom CU has branches across Southern California, including locations close to all three of the major fires in the region. A Wescom spokeswoman said the branches in Santa Barbara, Santa Clarita, La Habra and Anaheim Hills all were safe as of Monday afternoon. The Anaheim Hills location was closed early on Saturday as a precaution.
Kinecta CU spokeswoman Laura Oberhelman said no branches were damaged in any of the fires, and as of Monday evening, the credit union was not aware of any employee losses. “We do have a report of a member loss: a Montecito couple who have been members for 20 years lost their home Thursday night in the ‘Tea’ fire. They are safe; they escaped just in time with their cat, pictures, and jewelry, but among the items lost were a 1966 Corvette and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The members went to our Goleta branch on Friday, where we provided them with replacement checks and waived the fees. We asked the members to please let us know if there was anything more we could do to help.”
