Last week in Washington, Houston Mayor Bill White estimated total damages from Hurricane Ike in Texas of between $27 billion to $52 billion during testimony by state and local officials before a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee on disaster recovery.
White said the state and local governments could seek reimbursements from the federal government for hurricane-related recovery efforts of between $20 billion and $40 billion. In addition, he said, private insurance losses could range from $7 billion to $12 billion.
White said his figures were only preliminary because the Federal Emergency Management Agency has not completed damage estimates that would be submitted to the federal government.
Lieut. Gov. David Dewhurst told the subcommittee that Texas already has spent about $11.5 billion in direct costs from the storm.
The officials asked the Senate for an initial down payment of more than $16 billion to reimburse emergency costs since the hurricane swept ashore before dawn on Sept. 13. The total includes $2.5 billion for Houston, $2.4 billion for Galveston, and the $11.5 billion for the state. The money is needed to provide temporary housing for people whose homes were damaged or destroyed, clear debris from roads, and rebuild fire and police stations.
Gov. Rick Perry, who was not part of the delegation, said Dewhurst’s estimate was a preliminary assessment.
“You might call that a down payment, a first wave of requests,” Perry said. “It is going to be some time still before we have the type of assessments that we really need to know what the dollar amount is going to come to.”
Ike has been blamed for at least 26 deaths in Texas. It inflicted damage in at least 22 counties in the state.
