The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday edition that a week after one of the most powerful hurricanes in the past half century pounded Caribbean islands and the Southern United States, Canadian banks that operate in the affected regions are sorting through the destruction and working to restore essential services. The Globe's James Bradshaw and Christina Pellegrini write, however, that with electrical outages making it hard to use credit or debit cards, and banks working to restore data connections and repair damaged branches, many clients are reverting to cash and turning to banks to get it. That has left Canadian banks working around the clock to fulfill a dual role: securing employees' safety as the top priority, while also trying to ensure that customers and businesses have access to badly needed funds. Brendan King, Bank of Nova Scotia's senior vice-president of international banking, flew in this week to co-ordinate the bank's response. "We're focusing on the basic needs right now of our staff and our teams, so water and tarpaulins and clothes, canned foods, biscuits, those types of things." Scotiabank has reached "about 99 per cent" of its employees who were affected, Mr. King said.