NEW ORLEANS -
By universal consensus, this time New Orleans got it right.
Officials successfully emptied the city ahead of Hurricane Gustav, in stark contrast to the nearly 100,000 residents they left behind when Hurricane Katrina struck three years ago. And the newly fortified levees protecting the city held fast against the onrushing storm surge, unlike during Katrina when the floodwalls failed and 80 percent of the city was inundated.
That's the good news.
But it could also be the bad news.
That's because many of the city's 300,000 evacuees, spurred to leave by Mayor Ray Nagin's dire prediction that Gustav would be "the mother of all storms," are distressed at being stranded hundreds of miles from home for what turned out to be pretty much a false alarm.
Even though few New Orleans homes and businesses were damaged by Monday's storm, which landed as a Category 2 hurricane, far weaker than had been anticipated, Nagin said the city would not be open for evacuated residents to return until at least tomorrow because of widespread utility outages, downed power lines and toppled trees.
"The reasons you're not seeing dramatic stories of rescue is because we had a successful evacuation," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "The only reason we don't have more tales of people in grave danger is because everyone heeded the instructions to get out of town."
Police posted roadblocks around the city's perimeter to underscore the message - even as the estimated 10,000 New Orleans residents who ignored orders to evacuate and stayed home were free to start cleaning up their yards and resume their lives.
As a result, some evacuees said yesterday that they will be much less likely to heed evacuation warnings the next time a hurricane looms.
"Not allowing us to return to our homes is not only outrageous, it is an action that deliberately rewards those who disobeyed the mandatory evacuation order by allowing them to return," wrote one city resident on the New Orleans Times-Picayune Web site message board. "This decision ... will jeopardize lives in the future because people will be reluctant to evacuate if they know they will be discriminated against after the storm simply for following the rules." Meanwhile, experts predicted that for some who endured the expense and discomfort of what they felt was an unnecessary evacuation, Gustav might prove to be the last straw that drives them from New Orleans for good.
