Employees are home because they paid for their own tickets.
Northeast has NOT paid the cockpit crew that was stuck in OUA. So how are they hiring yet another crew for yet another aircraft? Having a round trip ticket in pocket would not have gotten any of the crew out of OUA. The only way to get a ticket out of OUA is to pay cash at the local travel agency. Nowhere to buy a ticket at the airport and they only take local currency at the travel agency. So the cockpit crew was left to their own devices to get out, having people back home getting their tickets for them. And still only getting promises of payment, nothing more.
Of course there's nothing suspicious about the truth, it just seems to be something Northeast is not capable of.