Authorities reported eight deaths related to the storm. All but one were traffic deaths, including four people killed in Georgia when their car struck a tree as they tried to flee the storm. A 27-year-old Lafayette, La., man died when a tree fell on his house as the storm whipped through. Before arriving in the U.S., Gustav was blamed for at least 94 deaths in the Caribbean.
There was less information about the fate of smaller coastal communities in the Cajun country southwest of New Orleans, where Gustav came ashore. In those low-lying regions, where natural wetland barriers have been eroded by oil and gas drilling, officials warned that damage was likely much greater.
"We don't expect the loss of life, certainly, that we saw in Katrina," Federal Emergency Management Agency Deputy Director Harvey Johnson told the Associated Press. "But we are expecting a lot of homes to be damaged, a lot of infrastructure to be flooded and damaged severely."
State officials said they had not been able to reach anyone at Port Fourchon, a vital hub for the energy industry where huge amounts of oil and gas are piped inland to refineries. Gustav's eye passed about 20 miles from the port.
The Gulf Coast is home to nearly half of the nation's oil refining capacity, and if either the onshore or offshore energy infrastructure suffered major damage from Gustav, gasoline prices could spike.
Risk Management Solutions, a major insurance-risk firm based in London, estimated that Gustav might have caused from $1 billion to $3 billion in damage to oil platforms and wells, while insured losses for damage to residential and commercial properties might range as high as $7 billion.
"The platforms tend to be fairly resilient to Category 3-level winds," Christine Ziehmann, a company official, said in a statement, "so the structural damage and impact on production will be relatively low."
Global oil markets seem to have endured the storm. Oil prices fell to $111 a barrel as the storm weakened.
In New Orleans, the closest call came at midday, when wind-driven water started spilling over a floodwall along the west side of the Industrial Canal bordering New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward.
Televised pictures of the swollen canal bursting its banks summoned ghastly memories of Hurricane Katrina, when multiple levee failures flooded 80 percent of the city, leading to the deaths of 1,600 people and the loss of at least 100,000 homes.
