Gustav Fades, Gulf Coast Assesses Damage

Hurricane Gustav didn't wreak the havoc of Katrina three years earlier, but almost 2 million people evacuated after being urged to stay away from the area. 
 
Power lines were down all over the city on Monday and a significant number of homes and businesses were without power according to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. He is urging people not to return yet.  
 
More than 800,000 people were without electricity across Louisiana, and some may not see it restored for two weeks or more, Gov. Bobby Jindal said. 
 
At a news conference with Jindal, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff urged Gulf Coast residents who evacuated to stay away until damage could be assessed. 
 
But even those who fled faced hardships. About 2,700 people who took up short-term residence Monday in the Louisiana State University Agriculture Center in Alexandria were told that the buildings generator power was not reaching the plumbing system, meaning no showers and no flushing toilets, said John Barnett, head of the facilities. 
 
Gustav roared from the Gulf of Mexico into southern Louisiana on Monday as a Category 2 hurricane with sustained winds of 110 mph, bringing fierce winds and heavy rains from the Alabama-Florida border west into Texas. 
 
In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, two people were killed when a tree fell on the house where they were staying after they had come from farther south to escape the storm, officials said. A man was killed in a similar incident in north Lafayette, Louisiana, officials said. 
 
Four hospice patients died while waiting for air ambulances to evacuate them from southern Louisiana, according to Richard Zuschlag, chairman and CEO of Acadian Ambulance. 
 
Gustav was blamed for more than 60 deaths in the Caribbean, including 51 in southwestern Haiti. 
 
By 2 a.m. CT on Tuesday, Gustav was a tropical storm with sustained winds of 45 mph, the National Hurricane Center said. 
 
In New Orleans, Gustav drove sheets of water over the protective levees around the Industrial Canal early Monday afternoon, but the walls appeared to hold up under the onslaught as the winds faded. 
 
Up to 6 feet of water spilled into an industrial park in the Upper 9th Ward late Monday morning, pouring through small gaps in the concrete flood walls before receding in the afternoon.