Pacific Coast National Bank
Location: Fallbrook, Calif.
Date: October 2007
Organization Type: Community Bank
Reason for Declaration: California Wildfires
The October 2007 wildfires in California destroyed 1,500 homes and burned over 500,000 acres of land from Santa Barbara County to the Mexico border. Pacific Coast National Bank’s two branch locations in San Clemente and Encinitas, both north of San Diego, were unaffected. But the bank’s employees, customers and, perhaps equally important, community were directly impacted by the fires.
Pacific Coast was adamant about helping its community recover and rebuild. Bank officials were not the only ones with this mindset. Once they contacted Agility for a ReadySuite Financial deployment, other factors related to the recovery fell into place. A local resident donated land for the recovery and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which charters, regulates, and supervises all national banks, granted the bank a temporary charter for the ReadySuite Financial recovery (in less than one day!).
From the outset, Pacific Coast leadership planned to have the ReadySuite Financial unit open for at least 60 days to help local residents and businesses apply for federal disaster loans through the Small Business Administration. The bank stationed a senior vice president and SBA loan administrator at the temporary location to facilitate loans. In addition, the bank offered low-interest construction loans for residents and businesses wishing to rebuild what they had lost in the fires.