Bush surveys Gustav damage as evacuees stream home

New Orleans: President George W. Bush heads to storm-battered Louisiana on Wednesday to survey damage from Hurricane Gustav as tens of thousands who fled New Orleans prepare to return to a "dark and hot" city struggling to restore power and maintain basic services.

The visit by Bush, who was widely criticized for a slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is part of an effort by officials to show that they learned the lessons from the 2005 storm that killed 1,500 people and caused $80 billion in damage.

Bush, who skipped the Republican National Convention to oversee the response to Gustav, was expected to arrive in Baton Rouge on Wednesday morning just as residents begin to pour back into the area around New Orleans.

Cars and pickup trucks packed with families, bedding, cats and dogs streamed into Jefferson Parish before dawn, the first evacuees of greater New Orleans to come home after Gustav. Nearly 2 million fled the Louisiana coast, including some 95 percent of New Orleans's residents -- an unprecedented exodus credited with saving lives.

Homemaker Christy Murray spent a month evacuated after Katrina and said authorities handled Gustav much better.

"It was 100 percent better than Katrina," she said. "There was no chaos this time. We were surprised. We came right in from Alabama, straight in this time. It was wonderful."

On Tuesday, Bush declared a major disaster across much of Louisiana, where most homes and businesses remain without electricity and hospitals running on backup-power are wary of being overrun by returnees.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said residents could return on Thursday, lifting a mandatory evacuation order, while City Council President Jackie Clarkson warned they would find a city that is "dark and hot."

"We want you to come into the city, check on your property, make sure that you are comfortable and make an intelligent decision on whether you want to stay in this environment or not," Nagin told reporters.

Hurricane Gustav delivered only a glancing blow to New Orleans and the region's crucial oil and gas infrastructure when it barreled ashore in Louisiana on Monday.

Almost all U.S. energy production in the Gulf of Mexico remained shut but producers said they found little damage to refineries and offshore platforms. Crude oil prices continued to fall on Wednesday as supply fears eased, trading near five-month lows.

Gustav also tested a levee system being rebuilt to protect New Orleans from the kind of deluge that followed Katrina, when protections for the city built below sea level collapsed.

Although reinforced New Orleans flood protections will not be finished until 2011, the levees held up under the pounding from Gustav. Water surged over floodwalls and squirted through cracks but the city stayed mainly dry.

LOW DEATH TOLL

Louisiana reported just six deaths in the immediate wake of the storm. New Orleans police also said they had arrested only two people for looting during the storm.

That was stark contrast to Katrina's aftermath, when looters roamed the streets and rescue helicopters plucked thousands of people from rooftops and bridges.

The Times Picayune, the city's daily newspaper, said in an editorial on Wednesday that residents were wrong to begin "second-guessing" the urgent call by officials for the large evacuation that peaked during the weekend.

"The low number of fatalities spoke volumes about the effectiveness of one of the nation's largest and most efficient evacuations," the newspaper said in an editorial.

Meanwhile, U.S. disaster officials turned their eye to new, dangerous storms churning in the Atlantic. Tropical Storm Hanna was moving through the Bahamas and threatened the U.S. East Coast from Florida to the Carolinas, and tropical storms Ike and Josephine trekked westward toward the Caribbean.

The Miami-based National Hurricane Center said Hanna was expected to move near the central Bahamas as it begins to strengthen again toward hurricane force.

Source: (Reuters)