TOPSHAM, Maine — A crew of six Goodall Landscaping employees in three trucks made short work of nearly two feet of snow outside a Delaware Home Depot on Monday morning, just hours after arriving following an all-night drive from Topsham.
Like much of the East Coast, Delaware was buried by the record snowfall during the weekend, which left scores of businesses and residents unprepared.
But operations manager Laura-Lee Bishop and five Goodall crew members showed Delaware all about snow removal, clearing a lot in Claremont, Delaware, in about five hours before heading to Middletown, Delaware, to dig out another Home Depot lot.
Plow crews in Delaware just aren’t familiar with that much snow, Bishop said.
But that’s just a dusting for Mainers, and the crew’s skill and speed was noted.
“One of the guys at Home Depot was ecstatic,” Bishop said. “He applauded us.”
Bishop said owner Ben Goodall has wanted to help out with storms in other states in the past, but was never able to spare the crews because Maine is usually blasted more than most areas.
This time, Goodall worked with a national maintenance company to organize the plow-based mission of mercy. The employees volunteered to make the trip, and they are being paid for their time.
The Maine Emergency Management Agency does not track private sector crews sent out of state, but Maine did not send any public crews south for this storm, in part because requests for help came from so far away, MEMA Director Bruce Fitzgerald said Monday.
“We always look and see if we can release someone,” Fitzgerald said. “Maine has always been very fortunate and we’ve always been able to send someone.”
The Goodall crews will work eight-hour shifts through the night over the course of two or three days before — mindful of a forecasted storm in Maine this weekend — they’ll head back home, Bishop said.
“We wanted to do our part,” she said.