crews worked to restore power to 5 million homes and businesses. some won t get their electricity back until next week. the big apple dodged a direct hit, but upstate new york got swamped. flash floods swept through this small town. make sure nobody s in the water! reporter: the federal government p pmised to pay for 75% of early emergency operations. i m going to make sure that fema and other agencies are doing everything in their power to help people on the ground. > reporter: back in the bigg cities life bounced back to normal. the nation s largest mass transit system in new york was running once again. i expected it to be a lot worse than it was. reporter: now we re getting an idea what it will cost to clean up after irene. insurance companies say the price tag is between $3 billion and $6 billion, significantly less than many predicted and it hardly compares to hurricane katrina exactly six years ago. katrina cost $106 billion. rob and tanya? staggering numbers. in