ECB Bancorp Inc., the parent company of East Carolina Bank, opened its doors Monday to serve the needs of its customers at 22 of its 25 office locations after Hurricane Irene made landfall in eastern North Carolina Saturday morning.

East Carolina Bank operates 25 offices in eastern North Carolina from Currituck to Ocean Isle Beach and Greenville to Hatteras, which is the same area of North Carolina that Hurricane Irene’s path tracked this past weekend. Thursday and Friday, ECB’s team focused on preparing office locations to shoulder the storm while various communities issued mandatory evacuations.

“The safety of our associates and their families was of primary importance to us as ECB prepared for Irene’s arrival. As early as Friday, we relocated key personnel to our Greenville market to ensure business continuity after the hurricane. Our customer call center was operational during the weekend to assist our customers, and our website was updated with pertinent information related to our office locations,” said James Burson, EVP and chief revenue officer.

Dwight Utz, president and CEO, stated, “Our disaster preparedness and recovery plan was activated and management from across our organization met at intervals throughout the weekend to ensure that each component of our plan was positioned for execution. The post-disaster and recovery process has been executed with precision and placed ECB in the position to open our doors on Monday in order to service the special needs of our small business clients and individual customers post Hurricane Irene. Certainly we are most grateful that all of our associates and their families remained safe during the hurricane.”

All ECB offices are open normal business hours, with the exception of Avon and Fairfield, which will be open on as soon as possible.