Ross has applied for $201,152 in reimbursement for the extra costs of cleaning up after February's snowstorms.

But manager Wayne Rogers has only a general idea of how much the cleanup actually cost the township.

"It took a week to clean up," Mr. Rogers said. "Information is still coming in. We had subcontractors out there doing stuff; some of them haven't even submitted the bills yet."

Penn Hills manager Mohammed Rayan is in a similar situation. His municipality applied for $156,747 in reimbursement but spent an undetermined amount more.

"We're still looking at data," Mr. Rayan said. "The cleanup continued the entire week, and then some."

The problem those two officials - and others throughout the region - face in seeking disaster relief is that the Federal Emergency Management Agency requires towns to submit snow storm costs only from one 48-hour period.

So despite having two storms dump nearly three feet of snow over a six-day period, managers could submit costs only from a single 48-hour time frame.

"We had two contractors in to help haul snow away, but they didn't come in until after the 48-hour period," Mt. Lebanon's Steve Feller said. "We also had one that helped remove trees."

Mr. Feller could have chosen a 48-hour period that included those contractors' costs, but he said that since the first storm happened on a weekend - Feb. 5-6 - the overtime costs for municipal crews made that the most costly two-day stretch. The municipality submitted $117,729 in costs for potential reimbursement.

The window meant a lot of other costs were not covered, however.

South Fayette manager Mike Hoy said in his community, the total emergency outlay - for overtime, equipment costs, subcontracting and salt - was about $125,000 to $130,000. South Fayette applied for $76,028 for "our highest-cost 48 hours."

Jamilah Fraser, a spokeswoman for FEMA's Pennsylvania office, said the agency's role is to help communities deal with disasters that outstrip their capacity to respond, not simply to pay for all of the extras.

"When you have enough snowfall to cause a disaster, usually within 48 hours is when most of the damage occurs," Ms. Fraser said.

That idea is expressed more formally in a question-and-answer section on the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency website:

"FEMA's policy is that state and local governments bear the primary responsibility for responding to emergencies. Federal assistance is supplementary and is appropriate only when an event is of such severity and magnitude that response requirements exceed state and local capabilities."

Ms. Fraser said the 48-hour window has been FEMA policy since at least 1998, and that it stayed in place when the agency's policies were revised in November. She also noted that a public comment period was held last year as those revisions were being formulated, so municipal officials had a chance to raise concerns.

"These policies were thoroughly reviewed and approved," she said.

It's likely, however, that few of today's municipal leaders were that familiar with the 48-hour policy. Storms have to yield "record or near-record" snowfall to qualify as disasters, and, according to Kevin Evanto of the Allegheny County Emergency Management Agency, none have met the criteria since the storied blizzard of March 1993.

A number of municipal officials were not inclined to be critical of the policies.

"Any reimbursement is welcome," Mr. Feller said in response to a question of how things might be done better.

"We're just hoping to get some of it back," Mr. Rayan said.

Mr. Rogers was more forceful.

"I think it's ridiculous," the Ross manager said. "But that's just my opinion. ... I believe it should be for the time period it took to recover from the event."

Local officials made a dramatic effort to pursue whatever reimbursement was available.

Much of it started with the county agency, which sent a message Feb. 18 to the municipalities in the county giving them five days - including the weekend - to submit cost figures.

The short time frame, together with rarity of the event, created another challenge.

Robinson manager Rich Charnovich said he spent three to four hours on a conference call with the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency and additional time on a conference call held by the office of U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair, with all of the municipalities in his district.

Having three working days to figure out the system and also put the information together "seemed very short," Mr. Charnovich said.

"Timeliness is always a factor," Mr. Evanto said. "PEMA wants it as fast as possible.

"That may be because typically the problem is flooding, and they want it fast so they can get out and look at the damage. Snow's a little bit of a different animal, but the timelines are really the same."

The effort paid off - Mr. Evanto said ultimately 125 of the county's 130 municipalities submitted costs, for a total of more than $9 million.

There is no certainty, however, how much any municipality will actually receive.

Counties statewide submitted information to PEMA, and on March 12, Gov. Ed Rendell officially applied for federal aid. It is up to FEMA to recommend a federal disaster declaration, and Mr. Evanto said it is up to the president to actually make the declaration and release the funding.

If that happens, Mr. Evanto said, PEMA and FEMA representatives would come to the area to interview municipal managers and review their documentation.

The workload is acceptable - on one condition, according to Mr. Hoy of South Fayette.

"As long as we get some money back, it's all good," he said.

Allegheny County was not, of course, the only area hit hard by the February snow.

Westmoreland County submitted $2.1 million in requests and, according to a spokesman, had enough snow to qualify.

Butler County applied for almost $1 million in reimbursement, said Frank Matis, emergency management director.

Emergency officials in Beaver County could not be reached.

Washington County Public Safety Director Jeff Yates said that county submitted a total of about $1.5 million in potential reimbursement, with 63 of the county's 66 municipalities taking part. But the county did not meet minimum snowfall requirements. Mr. Yates said the county could qualify in other ways, including the fact that bordering counties did receive qualifying amounts of snow.

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