"Better safe than sorry:" US Gulf Coast spared (News Feature)

By Frank Brandmaier Sep 2, 2008, 17:48 GMT

Beaumont, Texas/New Orleans - Aby was one of the last to leave - and one of the first to return.

Just 24 hours before, the small Super 8 motel near the coast on the border between Texas and Louisiana where he works at the reception desk, was ghostly empty.

'We had to turn people away who were fleeing from the hurricane, because we had to evacuate, too,' he said.

The 22-year-old packed his bags, drove three hours to a shelter in Houston, and hoped for the best. There was nothing else he could do.

Tuesday morning, after Gustav had spent its anger and whimpered down to a tropical depression, frayed billboards along the highway stood silent witness to Gustav's might.

During the humid night, Gustav rattled the autos along the empty streets, played with the traffic lights, whipped around tree limbs and stirred the leaden clouds. Rain poured down in fits and starts.

But Aby's motel - like much of New Orleans and the rest of the region - was spared serious damage.

The worst fears which had set into motion an unprecedented evacuation of 2 million people were not fulfilled. Gulf Coast residents were breathing a sigh of relief.

But the young hotel manager does not believe the mandate to evacuate was exaggerated.

'If you're not sure how bad the storm will be, it's better to be cautious,' he said. 'You always have to be prepared for the worst case.'

The big question now is this: After Gustav spared New Orleans and much of Louisiana the worst, will 2 million people be ready to evacuate, no questions asked, the next time? Or will they dismiss the warnings as alarmist?

'You know, I don't think so,' New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin told CNN Tuesday morning. 'The next time we have a storm like this one, that's approaching us that's a Category 4 and potentially strengthening ... I think our citizens are pretty smart and savvy and they will leave again.'

The big task on Tuesday was to start damage assessments and begin the slow return to normal.

'That will certainly start today,' said Jim Amoss, chief editor of New Orlean's Times Picayune newspaper.

The whole process could take two weeks, he said, but that was nothing compared to the six months that New Orleans was closed after the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster.

'We were lucky,' Amoss said. 'If the storm had been any stronger and moved in a different direction, parts of New Orleans would have been flooded. There's a sense of relief.'

The Picayune's print subscribers will be without the newspaper for awhile. Power outages shut down the printing plant - although the newspaper presented its print version on its website Tuesday, describing how water had spilled over some of the levees during tense moments on Monday but failed to break them.

'Safe at Home: Industrial Wall Holds Despite Fears; No flooding, but massive power outages as Gustav weakens,' reads the main headline.

The paper published voices of its readers, like that of Robert Nelton, 57, who said his house had survived the storm but his business, valued at nearly half a million dollars, had not.

While Gustav spent its last gusts Tuesday morning moving inland, Kenny and his team were up before sunrise. Their job: to re-open the stores in the supermarket chain where they work, one after another, to remove the plywood shutters from windows and dismantle reinforcements around the doors.

'That's complicated, because all the employees also evacuated, and are spread all over,' the manager said. 'But people here have to eat, after all.'

A separate issue was when the stores would have customers.

Nagin's spokesman said Tuesday that New Orleans residents should not expect to come back until Thursday at the earliest.

'Even though individual homes may be OK, we still have the downed power lines, we still have the downed trees, we still have the hospitals that are trying to get up and running,' Ceeon Quiett was quoted by the Times Picayune as saying.