US: AUTHORITIES ON America's Gulf coast were yesterday struggling to handle the return of almost two million evacuees to New Orleans, and low-lying areas of Louisiana, in the wake of Hurricane Gustav.
Officials credited the exodus from New Orleans, one of the largest evacuations in American history, for the low loss of life.
Eight people were killed in the US as a result of the hurricane.
But with Gustav past, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal faced the equally epic challenge of negotiating a peaceful and safe return of 95 per cent of the population of southern Louisiana, now scattered in northern areas of the state, Texas and Tennessee. The evacuees would not be allowed to go home until today at the earliest, officials said.
With further hurricanes forming over the Atlantic, Hanna was chewing up the Bahamas en route to Florida and South Carolina, the authorities were also under pressure to make sure that the public do not see the light toll of Gustav as an excuse to ignore future evacuation warnings.
"The reason that you are not seeing a dramatic series of rescues is because we had an efficient evacuation," secretary for homeland security Michael Chertoff said. "I wouldn't want to give the impression that a category three storm is a false alarm."
Though weakened, Gustav inflicted considerable property damage on Louisiana. Some 1.4 million homes, and even a number of hospitals, were without power. Trees and dangling power lines were strewn across roads and water and sewage systems in some small towns were out of action.
The damage could make it difficult or unsafe for evacuees to return to their homes, and officials pleaded for patience. "Re-entry is just days away . . . trees are down all over the city, power lines are down all over the city, and there is a significant number of homes and businesses without energy," said New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin.
Mayor Nagin, who issued repeated doomsday predictions ahead of Gustav's arrival, brushed off criticism that he had exaggerated the potential for danger.
"I would not do a thing differently," the mayor told CBS television. "I'd probably call Gustav, instead of the mother of all storms, maybe the mother-in-law or the ugly sister of all storms."
But while authorities were priding themselves on their response to Gustav, the storm still exposed the vulnerability of New Orleans, despite the billions spent shoring up the system of levees and floodwalls since 2005.
Although the winds barely reached hurricane force, water still poured over the top of floodwalls on the western Industrial Canal - the same canal whose collapse led to the flooding of New Orleans's Ninth Ward during Katrina.