This is true. We have snowmobiles, plows, and a bunch of wheel loaders. If the town our shop is located in needs extra assistance, they'll call us up and ask if we can help out. Generally, the arrangement is that we clear our buildings first and then we'll come out and help the town after we get in some sleep if they decide they need us.

Last major storm, it took us about 15 straight hours to get our stuff clear, then we got a few hours sleep, and went out to help the town. Typically their plows can move the snow into big piles on the side of the road, they just need us to come around with the loaders and help move the piles onto lawns and such. All in all, it was a solid three days before we got the town back to some semblance of normalcy.

I can't really ever see them commandeering our equipment. Typically, the biggest problem around here isn't that they don't have enough equipment....what they are usually lacking is enough qualified operators. Just like everybody else, sometimes the guys that drive the plows have trouble getting into work. Then you can only plow for so many hours before you need to get some sleep, at that point you're either shutting everything down until the next day or replacing your entire crew.

People need to realize that emergency workers aren't magicians. A major snowfall causes a lot of the same problems for us that it does for everyone else. In fact, often times we have the exact same problems, just on a larger scale...(You've got your car stuck in front of your neighbors house? Great, I'll be right over to help after I get my 17 ton loader out that's stuck down in a ditch.) One can only do so much at a time and certain things simply take precedence.