Katrina may cost US as much as 2 wars

Analysts inside and outside government agree that the $62 billion that Washington has spent so far was merely the first instalment of perhaps an unparalleled sum.

"I cannot put a cost figure on it," Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday in a visit to the hard-hit states.

The government never has dealt with a disaster of this scale: 90,000 square miles of the Gulf Coast affected, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced and an entire metropolitan area under water.

In 1992, the devastation of Hurricane Andrew in Florida and Louisiana cost $35 billion. The price for the 6.7-magnitude temblor in the Northridge area of Los Angeles in 1994 was $15 billion to $20 billion.

Members of the Louisiana congressional delegation say it could cost $100 billion just in New Orleans.

As for the overall toll, G. William Hoagland, the top budget adviser to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said: "We're obviously over $100 billion. I just don't know how much over."

As the House approved President Bush's second spending request Thursday, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee predicted that lawmakers would repeat the effort in a few weeks. "It will be the greatest appropriations outlay for a disaster in the history of doing this," said Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif.