Reopening of a bank’s branches and restoration of connectivity after a hurricane is a physical and emotional feat.

It is also a technical test.

After a storm wreaks havoc in cities and states, power lines and cell service may be down. Generators, fuel and batteries are flying off the shelves. For a bank, this means that its buildings are vulnerable and operations could come to a halt.

Queensborough National Bank & Trust in Louisville, Georgia, is an example.

The $2 billion-asset bank has 25 branches largely spread across East Georgia from Savannah to Augusta. Many of these branches were in the way of Hurricane Helene when it hit at the end of September. When Kim Kirk, the bank’s chief operating officer, was awakened by a buzzing phone on the morning of Friday, Sept. 27, she learned that the storm had veered east of its expected course overnight. While she was fine in her home in Buford, Georgia, most of the 25 Queensborough branches were not.

Only three branches had power that day. One of Queensborough’s two operations centers was running on a generator. There was no cell service at any branch or center.

“We’ve never had that as long as I’ve been in banking,” Kirk said.

Some employees were unable to get to work because trees draped over their cars or had fallen onto their homes.

“It was a scary situation,” Kirk said.

Financial institutions across the United States face similar problems when a natural disaster occurs. Most recently, there were banks in the Carolinas, Florida, Georgia and Tennessee after Hurricane Helene hit in September, followed by Hurricane Milton beating Florida in October. Queensborough’s experience offers lessons that financial institutions can use to prepare for future storms or disasters.

The first, Kirk said wryly, is to not always believe the weatherman.

“Helene formed quickly,” she said. “We had business continuity talks before the hurricane but we didn’t think we had anything to prepare for because it wasn’t supposed to hit our footprint.”

She plans to have a conversation about generators and maintaining plenty of fuel sources to keep them running. The generator for Queensborough’s operations center in Louisville was powered by natural gas, which the city shut down on Sept. 28 due to a line break.

One of the most pressing sources of concern in Queensborough when the power went down was keeping the alarms protecting the branches well juiced. They had backup batteries but they are only designed for short outages, Kirk said. The bank was fortunate that Kirk had spent the night out of the storm’s path and was able to obtain more batteries from her ATM and alarm vendor, Southern Bank Equipment & ATMs, as well as purchase two generators and 40 gallons of gas before she drove to Louisville on Saturday. (The gas was first intended for her IT team, including the CTO, CIO and IT analyst, who would replace alarm batteries every day and install generators.) It took her four tries to navigate to CEO William F. Easterlin, III: s house in Louisville on Saturday afternoon as fallen trees blocked surrounding roads.

“The real problem for financial institutions was that it was a three-phase outage,” said Beth Hausmann, president of Southern Bank Equipment. “Not only did they have no power, which affected network communications, but cell service was also completely destroyed. So there was no way for us or the bank to address some of the issues through technology.”

Queensborough opened a handful of branches on September 30 and October 1 that had power and at least one circuit, or could be powered by generators. The branches running on generators limited activity to the drive through. For branches with power and one circuit, Queensborough restricted interactive teller machines to ATM mode only as a precaution to preserve bandwidth for branch staff. The bank specified openings and closures on its website and on social media.

Kirk plans to explore Starlink satellite internet — “the hot topic since Helene,” she said — because she and her team didn’t plan for a scenario where cellular service could be down for days on end. Here again, Queensborough was fortunate that a few employees outside the main footprint, as well as others with generators and internet service at home, were able to take over certain tasks, such as answering customer inquiries and processing files.

But a fourth takeaway is to remind employees to bring company-issued laptops home before storms hit, including if they plan to temporarily relocate.

“We had some people who left the city to stay in hotels but they didn’t bring the laptops with them,” she said.

John McNair, president and CEO of the Community Bankers Association of Georgia, suggests that banks put together disaster recovery plans with their regulators and third-party providers. They should plan for worst-case scenarios, such as making sure generators, batteries and satellite internet are in place.

“Everyone in bank management needs to know what their roles and responsibilities are,” he said.

He notes that this type of planning can be even easier to do at a small institution.

“Sometimes ‘too small’ isn’t a bad thing, especially in a disaster situation, because you can mobilize everyone pretty quickly,” he pointed out.

Hausmann recommends that banks make sure locations have an extra alarm battery and that employees know how to secure front doors that are normally controlled by electronic access.

Queensborough was able to reopen all branches by Monday, October 7, except for one that was closed due to damage from an unrelated fire until two days prior. But Kirk acknowledged that the ability to work was technical.

“There’s also a human component,” she said. “We still have employees dealing with total loss of homes and cars. There are a lot of lingering effects for us but we are able to function every day.”