President George W. Bush heads to Louisiana today to survey damage from Hurricane Gustav as tens of thousands who fled New Orleans prepare to return to a city struggling to restore power and maintain basic services.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said residents could return to on Thursday, lifting a mandatory evacuation order. Other southeast Louisiana parishes nearby New Orleans cleared the way for their residents to return on Wednesday morning.
The visit by Mr Bush, widely criticised for a slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is part of a move by officials to show that they learned the lessons from the 2005 storm that killed 1,500 people and caused $80 billion in damage.
Mr 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.
Elsewhere, Tropical Storm Hanna is expected to regain hurricane strength when it heads for the US east coast later this week as more potentially deadly storms gather in the Atlantic Ocean, US forecasters said today.
New storms Ike and Josephine were both moving westward as Hanna swirled over the Bahamas.
The US National Hurricane Center said Ike could strengthen into a Category 2 hurricane before it reaches the Bahamas, Hispaniola, eastern Cuba or Jamaica by early next week.
The US government has forecast 14 to 18 tropical storms will form during the six-month season that began on June 1st, more than the historical average of 10.
Yesterday, the president 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.
The federal disaster declaration clears the way for aid to cover temporary housing for some two million who fled before the storm and for low-cost loans to offset uninsured losses.
Mr Nagin, who faced his own criticism for the bungled response to Katrina, cautioned residents they would come home to a city struggling to maintain basic services.
"The message is: 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," Mr Nagin said.
Hurricane Gustav delivered only a glancing blow to New Orleans and the region's crucial oil and gas infrastructure when it made landfall in Louisiana on Monday.
Almost all US energy production in the Gulf of Mexico remained shut, but producers said they found little damage to refineries and offshore platforms. Crude oil prices fell to a five-month low.
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.
But the storm left most Louisiana residents without power. New Orleans officials urged residents to stay away unless they were prepared to live under curfew and rough it without power, gas or access to fully staffed hospitals.
"We all want you home badly, faster possibly than you want to return to a city that is dark and hot," New Orleans City Council President Jackie Clarkson said.
Some 95 per cent of the city's residents fled in advance of Gustav, an unprecedented exodus credited with saving lives.
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.
Reuters