Residents return, but New Orleans 'still vulnerable'
Some of the two million residents who fled New Orleans and Louisiana to escape Hurricane Gustav were returning to their homes today.
New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin warned evacuees that he still believed the city was in a "very, very vulnerable state" and said that a dawn-to-dusk curfew would remain in place.
Many homes were without electricity or working toilets after Gustav swept through Louisiana after making landfall as a Category 2 storm on Monday.
With memories of the death and destruction caused by Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people three years ago still raw, Gustav was less destructive than feared.
Nine deaths have been attributed to Gustav in the US after it created havoc across the Caribbean, killing more than 90 people.
But there were still nearly 800,000 homes in Louisiana without power, including about 77,000 in the city of New Orleans. Officials said the main transmission lines into southern Louisiana were crippled and they had no timetable of when much of the power might be restored.
With many residents keen to leave the hot, cramped and overcrowded shelters, and neighbouring parishes reopening, Mr Nagin said he had no choice but to begin allowing residents back.
Some evacuees, who had heard the mayor tell them to get their "butts out" of town because the "storm of the century" was coming, said officials over-reacted, which would cause problems next time.
Catherine Jones, 53, of Silsbee, Texas, who spent three days at a church shelter with her disabled son, said: "Next time, it's going to be bad because people who evacuated like us aren't going to evacuate.
"They jumped the gun."
However, the state and city took pride in the largest evacuation in Louisiana's history, which saw an estimated two million people fleeing the state.
Emergency officials strongly defended the decision to evacuate and said that with something as unpredictable as a hurricane, it was better to be safe than sorry.
Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff said: "The reasons you're not seeing dramatic stories of rescue is because we had a successful evacuation.
"The only reason we don't have more tales of people in grave danger is because everyone heeded the instructions to get out of town."
New Orleans' levees, which failed during Katrina, held, and Gustav struck only a glancing blow to the city.
But when trees fell on homes, power lines went down and roads were washed out in parts of south Louisiana, there was no one around to get hurt as the city was a virtual ghost town.
Early insurance industry estimates put the expected damage to covered properties at anywhere from US$2bn (€1.4bn) to US$10bn (€7bn) - a significant amount, but well short of Katrina's US$41bn (€28.4bn).
Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, said the White House approved his "major disaster" declaration request, allowing residents of 34 parishes to receive federal funding for housing and recovery.
A strategic oil reserve will also be opened to help reverse a severe shortage of fuel, particularly in south Louisiana.
Initial inspections showed little damage to the Gulf Coast's extensive oil and gas installations, but resumption of production and refining could still take a few days.
