Nevertheless, he estimated that $20 million worth of his bank's prior business and home loans were affected by the hurricanes -- and that two-thirds of those properties were not insured against flooding.
The government said they weren't in a flood zone, so they didn't have flood insurance, and now customers could lose a tremendous amount of money," Williams said. "If they don't have other assets, that turns into a bad loan for us."
Although no loans from Gulf Coast Bank & Trust have yet gone unpaid -- in part because Williams and other banks have allowed payment extensions -- Williams expects some defaults. He said he thinks bankruptcy notices may have not reached him yet because of spotty mail service.
"We know they're coming but we haven't received anything," Williams said. "I guess in the spring we'll get the Christmas catalogues and along with them the bankruptcy notices."
MidSouth Bank in Lafayette, La., has extended about 300 loans since hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck, said bank President C.R. "Rusty" Cloutier. He estimated that out of about $400 million in total outstanding loans, MidSouth has about $8 million worth of business loans in the "hit zones," as he called the areas of Louisiana and Texas affected by the storms.
"Most of these people are folks who are out of work for a couple of weeks or they needed some money because the costs of being on the road has gotten to them," Cloutier said. "Schools are starting to reopen and people are coming off of the low point."
In Pascagoula, Miss., where Katrina flattened homes and left only concrete slabs behind, Lora Michael, chief executive of Jackson County Federal Employees Credit Union, has seen her operations improve slowly.
In the first weeks after the storm, Michael doled out cash withdrawals from the back of her white SUV, with an employee's husband standing guard with a .38-caliber pistol. Now Michael serves her 600-some credit union members from a small, beige trailer that sits a half-mile from her credit union's flooded office.
She has received donations of paper, phones, computers, desks, chairs and the trailer from credit unions in New York and Colorado.
"We have phones, and we're expecting DSL any day now, but we still don't have bathrooms," Michael said.
Each day she sends an employee about 10 miles away to another credit union to process ATM transactions and update balances. They've also spent hours trying to dry out car titles and loan documents. "It's amazing what sunshine and Lysol can do," Michael said.
She said she's still making auto loans, as many customers are getting insurance payments for their flooded cars. "People have gotten money from FEMA or money from their insurance and they're catching up on their loans," she said.
But the credit union is still open only three days a week. The rest of the time, Michael and her five employees are setting up bookshelves and furniture for the trailer, or repairing their own homes.
"We're all trying to get our lives back in order," she said. "It's getting better but we're still not there."
© 2009 The Washington Post Company
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