Matthew: It was a Monday night and we were, started getting ready for bed, already got the kids to sleep, and someone texted us just to see if we were OK. And we're like, "Why wouldn't we be OK?" [laughs] And, uh, she said, "There's a big fire."
Newscaster: Right now mandatory evacuations still in place as crews are making progress on the largest fire burning in Southern California. It's burned more than 238,000 acres so far. Hundreds of homes in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties destroyed. Firefighters are making some...
Matthew: As a firefighter for almost 12 years now, I've fought big brush fires. I've never seen anything like the Thomas fire.
Nicki: We had been preparing that our house had burned down. And we were like, "No, I don't... I think we're fine, we're optimists."
Matthew: Somewhere around nine o'clock we found out that our house had burned down.
Nicki: Cried for like 30 seconds and then intense adrenaline rushed through us.
Matthew: I think our first big, big concern was the kids and kinda figuring out how we were gonna tell 'em and then how, like how are we gonna support them as we're going through this. One issue that happened was that we were moving around from place to place in the beginning and our adjustor would reach out and say, "Hey, where should I send this check?" And that was, it was changing on a daily basis. We, in the first month probably lived seven different places.
Jim: When there's large wildfires like, uh, in California, not only do people lose homes and mailboxes, sometimes the Post Office is gone, you know? And so how do you get a paper check to somebody? You can't. The first thing they need is to know that there's financial safety and certainty. That whatever additional expenses they're going to incur, they've got the funds to be able to navigate that. While it sounds like it's simple that you're just replacing a paper check with an electronic check, it has way more ramifications than that to somebody's life when they're in a catastrophic situation. Thanks to Corporate Quick Pay, I'm able to help people like Matt and Nicki Craig get whole again as fast as possible.
Matthew: We didn't have to get a check, we didn't have to deposit it. So it kinda cut out three steps. Definitely a big time savings as the process went on. It definitely helped us a lot. Right now we're actually in the process of moving, hopefully one last time before we rebuild and really start moving forward with our lives.
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