LEWISTON – The Maine Army National Guard is missing about half of its equipment. However, if a disaster hits, Maine’s Guard will find what it needs.

Maj. Gen. John W. Libby – who leads Maine’s soldiers – promises it.

“I tell the governor, ‘If there’s a capability you need in the State of Maine,'” Libby said. “‘I can get it for you.'”

For more than a decade, Guard units across the country have agreed to share their equipment via the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, signed by officials in every U.S. state and territory.

Maine used the program in 1998, to borrow electricity generators during the ice storm.

It’s a program that seems forgotten in tornado-ragged Greensboro, Kan.

In the wake of the storm, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius complained that National Guard troops in her state were missing crucial equipment, the Associated Press reported.

After hearing Sebelius’s complaints, Libby checked.

“The state of Kansas has never activated the (sharing) system,” said Libby, Maine’s adjutant general.

The complaints have awakened the National Guard Bureau anyway.

On Wednesday, the national organization sent six Black Hawk helicopters and power generators in an initial wave of relief, according to a Pentagon press release.

“The states are poised to help one another when their own resources are overwhelmed,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

The emergency help won’t relieve the permanent shortage, though.

“Equipment in the Guard is a problem in Maine and it’s a problem across the nation,” Libby said.

Maine units have 40 to 50 percent of the equipment that they are supposed to have, he said.

The reason? The war.

“We’ve got an Army that’s stretched thin right now,” he said. “The military right now is just over-extended. It’s that simple.”

Most of the problems come when units deploy in Iraq or Afghanistan. When the deployments end, the equipment either remains behind or resides at an active duty base, where it is repaired and eventually returned to the states.

In some cases, it has taken years for equipment to return.

For instance, the 133rd Engineer Battalion spent most of 2004 in Iraq and returned home in March of 2005. Last fall, some of the battalion’s equipment was still making it back to armories in Lewiston, Norway and Portland.

Why does it take so long?

“I couldn’t begin to explain,” said Libby.

In the case of the 133rd, almost all the equipment has returned, he said. Other units are enduring severe shortages, though.

Shortages make it tough for units to be ready for deployment. It also makes it difficult for training.

In the early 70s, shortages in equipment forced local soldiers to train in shifts, sometimes breaking up individual units so they drilled over several weekends.

“It hasn’t gotten to that point, yet,” Libby said.