ST. TAMMANY PARISH, LA. — The interstates were clogged Tuesday with Hurricane Gustav evacuees inching their way home in the face of police roadblocks.
Rain was falling in great gray sheets, sending floodwaters coursing out of the Bogue Falaya and Tchefuncte rivers and into homes and cars.
At least four tornadoes touched down, and radios crackled with National Weather Service warnings of more.
The power was out, the sewers weren't working and there was no gasoline for miles.
It was a rough day in St. Tammany Parish, where two rivers and two interstates converge. Even after surviving Gustav on Monday, this sodden parish of about 250,000 people struggled to deal with calamities that weren't exactly of biblical proportions but close enough.
"What do you want to hear about first -- the floods, the traffic jams or the tornadoes?" Suzanne Parsons, the parish governmental affairs officer, asked as rain beat down on the emergency operations center in the town of Covington.
In many ways, St. Tammany was hit harder than New Orleans. The parish hugs the northern shore of Lake Pontchartrain north of the city. Gustav blew lake water into the parish, flooding riverside areas and felling trees and power lines.
People trying to get back into New Orleans and surrounding parishes threatened to overrun St. Tammany. Even though New Orleans remained under a mandatory evacuation order until midnight tonight, officials in adjacent Jefferson Parish said they would allow residents to return at 6 a.m. today.
About 1.9 million people fled the hurricane. By late Tuesday morning, thousands were fighting their way back home even though hundreds of thousands of homes were still without power or sewer service in the greater New Orleans area.
Two major routes in and out of New Orleans -- Interstates 10 and 12 -- converge in St. Tammany. Parish officials took to news radio programs, begging people to stop clogging the interstates and getting stranded without gas or food in a parish already overwhelmed by the forces of nature.
"They just sat there till the state police told them to go back, but then they ran out of gas -- and we don't have any," Parsons said.
On the St. Tammany website, Parish President Kevin Davis was adamant: "St. Tammany Parish remains closed. You may hear otherwise on some media, but I repeat, St. Tammany Parish is closed. Do not return at this time and do not try to cross St. Tammany Parish to reach our neighboring parishes to the south."
