New Orleans reluctantly opens its doors after Gustav

NEW ORLEANS — Thousands of people who fled Hurricane Gustav forced the city to reluctantly open its doors Wednesday, but nearly 1.2 million homes and businesses across Louisiana were still without electricity, and officials said it could take as long as a month to fully restore power.

As residents came home to New Orleans, President Bush toured battered Baton Rouge.

Faced with traffic backups on paths into the city, Mayor Ray Nagin gave up checking ID badges and automobile placards designed to keep residents out until early today. Those who returned said if the city was safe enough for repair crews and health care workers, it was safe enough for them, too.

“People need to get home, need to get their houses straight and get back to work,” said George Johnson, who used back roads to sneak into the city. “They want to keep you out of your own property. That’s just not right.”

But once back at home, many people had no power and no idea when it might return.

Within hours of returning to his suburban home, Paul Braswell was sweating over an outdoor grill as he cooked the chicken and deer sausage he’d stored in his freezer alongside gallon-size blocks of ice before evacuating with his family to Mississippi.

“We don’t have any power, and we don’t know when it’ll come back on, so we’re going to eat all we can until it does,” he said. “Tomorrow, we’re boiling shrimp my mom left in her freezer.”

Restoring power was critical to reopening schools, businesses and neighborhoods. Without electricity, gas stations could not pump fuel, and hospitals were running out of fuel for generators.

Some places never lost power, including the Superdome, where the Saints planned to open their regular football season Sunday.

In Jefferson Parish, which also reopened Wednesday, officials reported that most sewage-treatment stations were out of service because there was no power. The parish urged residents not to flush toilets, wash clothes or dishes, or even take showers out of concern that the system might backup and send sewage flowing in home and businesses.

After touring an emergency center and flooded-out farmland, President Bush praised the government response to Gustav as “excellent,” but he urged utility companies in neighboring states to send extra manpower to Louisiana if they could spare it.

“One of the key things that needs to happen is that they’ve got to get electricity up here in Louisiana,” Bush said.

The administration’s swift reaction was a significant change from its response three years ago to Hurricane Katrina, a far more devastating storm. Roughly 1,600 people were killed, and the White House was harshly criticized for stepping in too late.

To residents who lived through Katrina, that failure was still fresh.

“What do I care if Bush is visiting? I’m still trying to get my house back together from Katrina,” housekeeper Flora Raymond said. “This time things went better, but we still need help from the last time.”

In the days before Gustav arrived, nearly 2 million people were evacuated from the Louisiana coast. Only 18 deaths were attributed to the storm in the U.S.

Nearly 80,000 people remained in shelters in Louisiana and surrounding states. An estimated 18,000 people fled from New Orleans on buses and trains arranged by the state and federal governments. Officials did not expect to begin bringing them back until this weekend.

Five people were arrested Wednesday in only the second case of attempted looting in New Orleans since the city emptied. Worried about potential looting of vacant properties, Nagin said the city would maintain its dusk-to-dawn curfew indefinitely.

In Haiti, U.N. peacekeepers found hundreds of hungry people stranded for two days on rooftops and upper floors in Gonaives on Wednesday as the fetid carcasses of drowned farm animals bobbed in soupy floodwaters.

Haiti has seen its crops ruined and at least 126 people killed by three storms in less than three weeks.

Rescue convoys had been trying to drive into Gonaives, Haiti’s fourth-largest city, but kept turning back because lakes formed over every road into town.

Businesses were closed — both because of flooding and for fear of looting — and supplies were running short. People in water up to their knees called to Argentine peacekeepers in Spanish, shouting “Give me water!” Women on balconies held up empty pots and waved spoons, signaling their hunger.

“There is no food, no water, no clothes,” said the 37-year-old pastor, Arnaud Dumas. “I want to know what I’m supposed to do. … We haven’t found anything to eat in two, three days. Nothing at all.”