Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images

After Hurricane Helene, it rocked the Southeast, causing power outages and widespread destruction, banks are assessing damage, settling employees, working to reopen operations and trying to communicate with customers.

Financial institutions operating in western North Carolina, upstate South Carolina and parts of Florida, Georgia and Tennessee said Monday they were focusing on keeping their employees safe and trying to help communities devastated by floods and mudslides.

In areas around Asheville, North Carolina, where at least 40 people died in the storms, Helene caused particular damage, knocking out power, water, gas and communications and destroying dozens of roads, including major highways.

“The damage is greater than it appears on TV,” Peter Gwaltney, president and CEO of the North Carolina Bankers Association, said in an email to American Banker on Monday. “Videos and photos don’t do it justice.”

Banks with a large presence in the area, including First Citizens BancShares, Truist Financial, Bank of America, HomeTrust Bancshares and First Bancorp, faced similar challenges over the weekend and Monday as employees had no power or water and branch locations covered in debris.

Mempis, Tenn.-based First Horizon, which has several locations in western North Carolina, spent Monday delivering supplies and assistance to its employees, according to Sam Erwin, regional president of Mid Atlantic. He said that in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina, and a neighboring county, many businesses and homes have been without power since Friday.

Erwin said the situation in western North Carolina is more serious. He was unable to contact a bank manager in Asheville for two days due to poor cell reception and power problems. Erwin said the Asheville banker walked 45 minutes on Monday to get enough reception to talk on the phone.

First Horizon’s location in Boone, North Carolina – a mountain town about 100 miles north of Asheville – was flooded with about a foot of water, and it will likely be three or four months before the department is operational again, Erwin said. In the meantime, First Horizon plans to launch one or two full-service mobile branches, he said. It expects its three Asheville locations to be open in some capacity later this week.

Isolation and the inability to travel within the region made it difficult for banks to contact employees and assess damage to offices and other facilities. As of Monday afternoon, all roads in western North Carolina were still considered closed, according to the state Department of Transportation website.

Rusty Edwards, regional manager for $12.1 billion Asheville First Bank, said in an email Monday that he spent the day driving around the county to meet with employees and city and county officials.

He said there was little or no cell service, very little electricity and no water service, adding that gas prices were high and people were waiting two to three hours to fill their tanks. Southern Pines, North Carolina-based First Bank has approximately 14 branches throughout Asheville and is working to launch local branches.

“The safety of our employees is paramount,” Edwards said. “Many people have been personally affected by the devastation or their family members across the region. Houses and cars have been flooded, there are power outages and very poor Internet access. We accounted for everyone, which was a huge relief.”

Edwards said the bank is currently working on how to support its employees, customers and communities.

In recent days, Truist Financial has contacted more than 13,000 employees who are in the storm’s path and is still trying to contact those employees who have not yet responded, the company said Monday. The North Carolina-based company, which operates in the Southeast, said it would continue to try to make contact “until all team members are confirmed to be OK.”

While Truist already delivers bottled water, meals and other sanitary supplies to places like Greenville, South Carolina; Augusta, Georgia; and Petersburg, Florida have not yet made it to Asheville due to ongoing road closures.

“We expect to deliver humanitarian assistance to western North Carolina once the area is deemed safe and open to recovery efforts,” the company said.

The company says Truist employs about 600 workers in a multi-county region of North Carolina that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has designated a disaster area. About half of the 34 branches in the area are currently closed due to power outages.

Erwin said First Horizon’s experience with disasters in Louisiana, Florida and Texas helped the bank prepare for events like Helene.

“I don’t know if I fully understood it until I was in the middle of the disaster,” Erwin said. “So we have a team that is always ready and that starts with really supporting our colleagues, making sure they have food and water and access to fuel.”

Erwin said Monday that a fuel and supply truck was stationed in Greenville, Tennessee, providing gas, water, batteries, tarps and other relief items to First Horizon employees and, on a limited basis, to the community.

Erwin planned to travel to Asheville on Tuesday to personally assess the situation, provide fuel and supplies to First Horizon workers and assess where further assistance is most needed.

The North Carolina Bankers Association, which has 84 members, hosted a Zoom call with bankers on Sunday afternoon to provide an update on current conditions. “Communication in a case like this is critical,” Gwaltney told bankers on the call. The group was scheduled to have another phone call Monday evening.

In a telephone interview Sunday, Bob Washburn, president and CEO of LifeStore Bank in West Jefferson, North Carolina, said the main focus was on taking care of the bank’s employees.

“Probably half of our employees are still without power and water,” Washburn said during a Zoom call. “So we’re renting some space where they can take showers.”

Adam Currie, president of First Bank, said during the same Zoom call that at one South Asheville branch, a front-end loader used to clean up the site collected so much trash that it broke down.

Megan Pelletier, chief operating officer and human resources officer at HomeTrust Bank, said the bank reserved blocks of hotel rooms in Charlotte and Greenville for employees who were willing and able to travel after the bank’s operations center in Asheville lost access to running water .

“We are setting them up and they will be working in these locations for at least the next week,” Pelletier said.

As of Sunday, there’s another problem at branches in the most devastated areas: cash shortages. Gwaltney, of the North Carolina Bankers Association, told bankers on the call that his group would work with them to arrange an escort to make cash deliveries.

First Horizon’s Erwin said Monday that the bank has worked with some clients to handle payroll and similar tasks, but the clients’ main need is cash.

Many stores that are open only accept cash, so Erwin said First Horizon strives to provide customers and broader community members with access to cash through its locations and mobile branches. Another complication is that much of the cash was soaked during the hurricane, although “as we have agreed, the Federal Reserve will take back wet cash,” Erwin said.

But, he said, “the most important thing is that as a banking community, we are all in this together.”

Amid the massive destruction, many banks made donations to disaster relief organizations. Truist’s charity, the Truist Foundation, said it would donate $1 million for relief and recovery in communities most impacted by Helene.

“Many of the communities we serve are experiencing historic and catastrophic flooding, and millions of people still lack power or access to everyday necessities,” Lynette Bell, president of the Truist Foundation, said in a statement. “We want to put our goal into action by making additional funding available to help people in affected communities get online as quickly as possible – digitally and physically.”

Bank of America is also committing $1 million to support those affected by the hurricane. The first $500,000 will now go to the American Red Cross, with the remaining $500,000 to be allocated as needs continue to be identified.

San Antonio, Texas-based USAA announced Saturday it is donating $1 million to the American Red Cross, Team Rubicon and Feeding America to help communities affected by Helene.