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The men who predicted that New Orleans would be destroyed by "the mother of all storms" faced charges of over-reacting yesterday as residents dusted themselves down and tried, with limited success, to pick their way home to the battered city.
A day after Hurricane Gustav swept
through Louisiana, causing eight deaths and widespread storm damage - but crucially failing to produce any significant flooding n officials were forced to defend the decision to evacuate more than two million people.
"People have been asking, 'Was this a false alarm?' But nothing could be further from the truth," said Michael Chertoff, the US Homeland Security Secretary, who helped oversee the biggest peace-time evacuation in American history.
"The reason you're not seeing dramatic footage of rescues is because there was such a successful evacuation. "Weary evacuees, who are holed-up in motels and rescue centres across the southern states of the US, may see things differently.
They learnt that their homecoming could now be delayed as officials attempt to organise a "tiered return".
Emergency services said highways into Louisiana would remain closed until further notice and that petrol stations remain empty across much of the region.
About 1.4 million homes are still without power, while the New Orleans sewage system has been damaged.
Checkpoints were set up around New Orleans today to keep the city empty of residents while work gets under way to restore power and other critical services.
National Guardsmen and state police promised to stop people not authorised to return. The city didn't expect to be safe enough to reopen until Thursday local time at the earliest.
"This is still a very, very serious storm that has caused major damage in our state," said the Governor, Bobby Jindal.
"I would describe the evacuation process as the pre-game, pre-season. We've not even got to half-time yet, in terms of the process of dealing with the damage caused by the storm."
Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans whose dramatic press conference on Saturday predicting the "storm of the century" created gridlock on local highways, may have the most to lose from any backlash.
But he said: "I would not do a thing differently ... I'd probably call Gustav, instead of the mother of all storms, maybe the mother-in-law or the ugly sister of all storms."
- INDEPENDENT, with AP
