MINOT, N.D.-After a whirlwind three months, GEM FCU here has opened its new building; its former location was a casualty of the flooding that ravaged Minot this summer.
"We evacuated in May on a false alarm," said President Cassia Dahl. "We were out for a week, went back into a dry building, and then we evacuated on June 21 and lost everything. We had six feet, five inches of water in our building-up to the doors."
Nearly all of the credit union's materials were saved, including files, chairs, pictures and other decorations, but the rest of the building-including desks and other furniture built into the facility-was lost.
For 2.5 months GEM relocated to the offices of nearby Prairie FCU, which "stepped forward and housed us, gave us four offices, a huge desk in their lobby and welcomed us with open arms." During that time GEM was able to purchase a facility that had formerly housed a community bank, renovate it and put in a new drive-up window before opening in early September.
Throughout all the turmoil, Dahl said GEM FCU never lost a day of business. "I would say we lost member time of less than five hours," she said.
Members also rolled with the punches, said Dahl, as many were in similar straits. "It was a major, major flood," she said. "There were about 4,000 homes that were flooded in the valley. It was a major catastrophe for this town, so a lot of our members were affected also." GEM serves more than 2,100 members with $18 million in assets, and Dahl said that for any member with loans, "we automatically advanced their due date down the road three months and gave them an extension, because they had a lot on their plate." GEM does not hold first mortgages, but does offer consumer and home equity loans. "We haven't lost any loans or had any delinquencies due to the flood," said Dahl.
Dahl added that the local economy was booming before the floods hit, thanks to the oil industry in the area, which helped keep a bad situation from being worse. "The housing market was as tight as it can get; we have virtually zero unemployment because there's jobs everywhere," she said.
GEM did offer emergency loans to members, but "there wasn't much demand for it." While extensions on payments helped mitigate the need for emergency loans, Dahl said that FEMA's emergency money for people who lost their homes also helped. "For the month of July, due to the deposits from FEMA, we grew $2 million in our shares. That was pretty much citywide" at every institution, she said.
FEMA Funds
Aside from the flood damage, Dahl called the FEMA deposits and their effect on the CU's net worth "the biggest impact we've had from this." As of its June Call Report, GEM was Well Capitalized at 8.62%.
Dahl wasn't sure how the flooding had impacted GEM's membership-which is limited to city, county, state and federal employees, along with local phone company SRT-but hoped that increased visibility would play in the CU's favor. Whereas the new location was down in a valley, GEM's new home is high on a hill. Additionally, when the water was at its highest level, GEM's sign-including time and temperature-were still visible, which led to photos that appeared in several media outlets.
"The area where our building was located is still dealing with cleanup all around," said Dahl. "It still is very devastated by the floodwater. Was it a good move for us rather than trying to put that building back together? Absolutely. For us to be down in that flood ravaged area right now, it would be tough to do business everyday."
