Personal Experience - Finance - Moran - Agnes Flood

By: Douglas Moran
Situation: Hurricane Agnes Flood, Corning NY, 1972

Note: Ancient history, but potential inspiration for thinking about current situation.

The area's dominant employer (Corning Glass Works) initially issued script. Within a few days, they had massive amounts of cash shipped in and started disbursing it to workers:

If you had a recent pay stub, you could get your weekly pay, rounded off to the nearest $20.
Since the flood struck in the middle of the night, many people didn't have access to pay stubs. However, if you had an employee id, you could get a fixed amount (set at typical factory worker pay).
Those who didn't have an id could be vouched for by someone who did.

It took the banks, S&Ls and Credit Unions almost a week to start operating at minimal levels. Hardcopy documentation of account balances facilitated withdrawals, but personal recognition by tellers played a major role - in these days most transactions went through the tellers and this was a small city (20,000 in city itself, less than 10,000 in the surrounding hamlets and countryside). Experience was that the banks played only a secondary role - nearby areas had much harder times because their major employers were unprepared/unable to create an ad hoc payroll system.

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