WASHINGTON - The dire conditions created by Hurricane Katrina may be confined to the Gulf Coast, but on paper the emergency is all over the country.

President Bush has declared that Katrina-related emergencies exist in 40 states and the District of Columbia. Some, such as California, Massachusetts and North Dakota, are far removed from Katrina's wrath.

Other states, most notably Texas, are looking after thousands of evacuees, putting a severe burden on local services.

Apparently it does not take much to qualify as an emergency.

North Dakota, for example, has taken in 38 families. It plans to use the money freed up by the emergency declaration to pay for their housing, medical care and education expenses.

Montana requested the federal aid before it found out the state would not be housing mass numbers of evacuees, according to the governor's office. The state plans to request about $25,000 to pay for a hurricane hot line set up for employees and others who wanted to find ways to help.

"We appreciate being eligible to cover certain costs," said Sarah Elliott, spokeswoman for Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer.

Nicol Andrews, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the emergency designation is available to states helping evacuees.

"The states have obviously welcomed with open arms these evacuees and the president is giving them a way to pay for it," she said.

Full federal reimbursement is available for "emergency protective measures" to save lives and protect public health and safety, according to the emergency announcements issued by the White House.

The states most directly affected by the hurricane - Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi - also have received the more serious designation of disaster areas. That provides more significant help with needs such as rebuilding damaged infrastructure.

The 10 states that do not have Katrina-related emergency or disaster declarations are Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wyoming.

Three of those states have active disaster declarations for other reasons - Maine and New York for spring flooding, Wyoming for a tornado.

Andrews could not recall any other time when so many states were qualified for federal emergency aid.

Pietro Nivola, director of the Governance Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, said it was not surprising that so many states were asking for help.

"You'd have to be a fool not to put in for as much relief as you can get when everybody knows that that's the name of the game," he said. "Very few states are going to just be altruists on their own if they know there is a possibility of federal support."

Nivola said that while federal assistance certainly is appropriate after disasters of the scope of Katrina, "there is a broader question here of free riding."

"If every time there is a disaster or a potential for disaster, communities know that the cavalry from Washington will come riding to the rescue, then it creates a certain amount of complacency at the local level," he said.