CUMBERLAND — Cities around the tri-state area are working to recover after a brutal winter storm assaulted them over the weekend.

“We’re making headway,” said Brook Cassell, Cumberland’s superintendent of streets. “It’s slowly but surely coming along. The only problem is that we did have over 2 feet of snow.”

Cassell said the street department is having difficulties finding somewhere to put the snow. “Some of the streets are so narrow with parking on both sides that it’s hard to get a plow through them,” said Cassell. “With two feet of snow there’s nowhere to put it. We’re slowly but surely getting down the streets but there’s nowhere to put the snow.”

Cassell added that the street department’s employees have been hard at work fighting the snow. “We can work 16 hours at a time, so they work 16 hours, then they’re off eight hours before they work 16 again,” said Cassell, who said the department’s budget for overtime pay had been expended in December. “We’ve been putting out as many men and as much equipment as we can get a hold of — we haven’t limited our resources despite exhausting our overtime budget.”

Cumberland’s fire department and the city of Frostburg are asking citizens to ensure that fire hydrants are clear of snow.

“When a fire emergency breaks out, seconds do count. A short delay may be the difference between life and death,” said Cumberland Fire Chief Bill Herbaugh in a press release. “Locating and accessing an obstructed or covered fire hydrant impedes firefighting efforts once the fire department arrives on the scene.”

“As you can imagine, this is a major winter disaster,” said Frostburg City Administrator John Kirby. “Our crews have been working nonstop since Friday and we’ve hired some outside contractors to help us.”

Kirby said that Frostburg’s been using heavy equipment to remove snow, including four trucks, three backhoes and a large loader. “We try to plow at least one lane of every street and we will eventually get the alleys and all of the parking lots,” said Kirby, who added that Frostburg is facing similar issues with a lack of places to put the snow. “(The plows) go through and sometimes the snow just kind of rolls back in,” said Kirby.

“There are times when we know that we are inconveniencing our citizens because it’s building up in driveways, sidewalks and that sort of thing,” said Kirby. “We’re asking people to be patient; we’re doing our best.”

“We’ve managed so far to keep our streets open and people moving through all these storms,” said Peggy Jamison, mayor of Oakland. “Right now, we’re in the process of widening the roads.”

Oakland is also having to deal with overtime costs. “Because of the lack of highway user funds back in August, we’ve tried very hard to limit our overtime because we had a 90 percent cut to our general fund budget which would have gone toward this,” said Jamison. “We’ve revised our schedule so the guys are working different hours to try and be there and take care of things. It’s been working pretty well for us.

“I think with good weather (Monday) the guys are going to be able to get things as wide as they can.” said Jamison.

“We’ve had a time up here,” said Sonny Rhodes, mayor of Keyser, W.Va.

Rhodes said that some of the equipment available to Keyser has broken down, including a truck and the plow for the city’s dump truck. He added that the city has spoken to several contractors for snow removal assistance.

“Main Street looks great,” said Rhodes. “We’re getting it all cleaned up. The big trouble is finding someplace to dump snow.”

Contact Cory Galliher at cgalliher@times-news.com.