Report: Ike costs Houston $6 billion

HOUSTON, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- Power outages that kept parts of Houston in the dark for more than two weeks after Hurricane Ike could cost billions of dollars, a newspaper analysis shows.

The Houston Chronicle reported Sunday the bill could surpass $6 billion once lost economic activity, repairs to electricity infrastructure and residential losses like spoiled food in refrigerators is taken into account.

The newspaper said its analysis does not account for insurance money that eventually may help recover some of the losses or the surge in spending that followed the storm.

"All the time the cost of these kinds of disruptions are going up because our society is more and more dependent on electricity," said Peter Hartley, an economics professor at Rice University.

Ike, which slammed into the Texas coast Sept. 13, knocked out power to more than 2 million homes and businesses in the Houston area. Then, about a week later, about half of those customers were still in the dark.

The economic activity lost to power outages was about $5.1 billion, said Ignacio San Martin, an economist in The Woodlands with Madrid, Spain-based BBVA, a global financial services giant.

San Martin estimated Houston-area households likely spent $250 million just to replace food that spoiled in their refrigerators during the blackouts.