A still-largely deserted New Orleans yesterday prepared to take stock of damage from Hurricane Gustav after rebuilt levees appeared to hold off a repeat of the flooding caused by Katrina three years earlier.
Gustav roared through the heart of the US Gulf oil patch but oil and natural gas prices plunged when Gustav weakened before landfall and spared key Gulf oil installations, easing fears of serious supply disruptions.
As the hurricane’s winds slowed, it also stayed on a westerly track, missing New Orleans in a twist that helped keep it from becoming the monster storm feared just days earlier.
PHOTO: AP
But the storm surge kicked up by Gustav tested a levee system still being rebuilt after collapsing during Katrina. A tense vigil followed into Monday night for any sign of the kind of deluge of three years ago when 80 percent of New Orleans flooded and thousands were stranded.
The US Army Corps of Engineers closed massive new floodgates built after Katrina and intended to keep Lake Pontchartrain waters from surging back toward the south into the city and over the banks of two canals.
Although water flowed over flood walls and spurted through cracks, a flood barrier system which officials had warned left New Orleans vulnerable appeared to hold up.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said residents could begin to return to the city later this week. With the city still under curfew, officials were to being assessing damage yesterday and begin allowing businesses to return as soon as today.
“Reentry is only days away and not weeks away,” Nagin said.
‘DODGED BULLET’
Some residents emerged from boarded up homes relieved to find only broken tree branches and toppled signs.
“We’ll still get some nasty weather, but we’ve dodged a big-time bullet with this one,” said stockbroker Peter Labouisse, sitting on the porch of his home, which was shuttered and without power.
Louisiana officials reported six storm-related deaths, including an elderly couple in Baton Rouge who were killed when a tree fell on their home.
Mindful of the ravages of Katrina, which killed some 1,500 people, nearly 2 million people had fled the Gulf Coast as Gustav approached.
Underscoring continued concern about the fragile flood barriers, officials in rural Plaquemines Parish told the handful of residents remaining to flee as a levee protecting 200 homes had been weakened by water surging over the top.
IMPATIENCE
Meanwhile, impatience at overcrowded shelters around the Gulf Coast was rising yesterday as evacuees from New Orleans to Southeast Texas waited to learn when buses that whisked them to safety during mandatory evacuations would return to take them home.
“That’s the first question everyone is asking,” said Jim Rollins, whose First Christian Church in Tyler took in about 140 people from Beaumont. “If you know, please tell me. These people want to go home.”
Some minor fights broke out at a shelter in Shreveport, Louisiana, where evacuees had been packed together for three days in a vacant store lot.
Others became frustrated simply trying to find a place with a cot available.
Kenneth and Leslie Smith, of New Orleans, said they spent a day driving city-to-city before finding an open shelter for them and their three young children late on Monday near Dallas.
“Everyone wasn’t mean,” said Kenneth Smith, 36. “But you have some people with nonchalant attitudes who, if they were in my shoes, they would want some help.”
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