Louisiana begins process of recovering from Gustav
Although Hurricane Gustav's impact was not as bad as feared, Louisiana faces 'serious challenges,' Gov. Bobby Jindal says. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin hopes citizens can return in 'days ... not weeks.'
NEW ORLEANS — Spared from catastrophe, Louisiana today faces an extended recovery from Hurricane Gustav's onslaught. New Orleans' evacuated populace could return within days, but many among the 1.9 million who fled the Gulf Coast will find their return delayed by widespread power failures, blocked roads and wind-damaged and flooded communities.
Downgraded to a tropical storm, Gustav nudged across northern Louisiana and skirted east Texas early today, dumping as much as eight inches of rain and triggering flash floods. More than 1 million homes were without power and large swatches of Louisiana's southern bayou country remained impassable because of roads obstructed by fallen timber and power lines.
"There are serious challenges that are going to be present throughout our entire state," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said during a press briefing this morning in Baton Rouge.
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said there were ample federal resources to begin the recovery process in Louisiana while preparing for the growing possibility later this week of a Florida landfall by Tropical Storm Hanna, which formerly had attained hurricane status and now is regaining strength over the Bahamas.
"We'll be able to address that storm without taking away from the resources we've devoted here," Chertoff said. He later joined Jindal for a helicopter tour of the storm-isolated bayou towns of Houma, Morgan City and Thibodaux.
New Orleans remained a ghost town occupied by stragglers, levee workers, cops and soldiers. Mayor C. Ray Nagin urged more than 200,000 residents who heeded his mandatory evacuation to be patient while officials restore power, repair wind damage and inspect strained levees that held off Gustav's storm surge.
"The city's not quite ready for our citizens to return," he said, vowing that "re-entry is only days away, not weeks away."
Companies would probably be allowed to return Wednesday to prepare for a repatriation of the city's population, Nagin said, adding that city schools would reopen next week--a strong hint that residents could return by the end of this week.
But on New Orleans' streets, strewn with trash, tree limbs and shattered glass, some die-hards who rode out the storm grumbled about Nagin's vague plans.
As he swept leaves and debris near his house on St. Charles Avenue in the city's blue-blood Garden District, Randy Craver groused that Nagin was leaving his constituents in the dark.
