NEW ORLEANS - Thousands of people who fled Hurricane Gustav forced New Orleans to reluctantly open its doors Wednesday, but more than a million homes and businesses across three states were still without electricity.
Officials said it could take as long as a month to fully restore power.
As residents went home to New Orleans, President Bush viewed toppled trees and downed power lines in Louisiana. He said the response to Gustav has been "excellent," and he praised the improvement since Hurricane Katrina.
Faced with traffic backups on paths into New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin gave up checking ID badges and automobile placards designed to keep residents out until early today.
His surprise reversal eased some of the gridlock that for two days has clogged many of the highways leading into the city.
"This is going to be a continued challenge going forward," Nagin said. "Some people are going to come to their homes, they're going to find trees in the middle of their kitchens and all that good stuff. Just let us know, and we'll try and accommodate you."
Those who returned said that if the city was safe enough for repair crews and health-care workers, it was safe enough for them, too.
"People need to get home, need to get their houses straight and get back to work," said George Johnson, who used back roads to sneak into the city. "They want to keep you out of your own property. That's just not right."
But once back at home, many people had no power and no idea when it might return. Utility giant Entergy Corp., with 1.2 million customers in Louisiana, reported 674,036 power failures among them Wednesday afternoon. Tens of thousands of customers in Arkansas also were without power.
The Department of Energy reported 1.2 million electricity customers were without power in Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi.
"There is no excuse for the delay. We absolutely need to quicken the pace at which power is restored," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said.
Within hours of returning to his suburban home, Paul Braswell was sweating over an outdoor grill as he cooked the chicken and deer sausage he stored in his freezer alongside gallon-size blocks of ice before evacuating with his family to Mississippi.
"We don't have any power, and we don't know when it'll come back on, so we're going to eat all we can until it does," he said. "Tomorrow, we're boiling shrimp my mom left in her freezer."
Restoring power was critical to reopening schools, businesses and neighborhoods. Without electricity, gas stations could not pump fuel, and hospitals were running out of fuel for generators.
In Jefferson Parish, which also reopened Wednesday, officials reported that most sewage-treatment stations were out of service because there was no power. The parish urged residents not to flush toilets, wash clothes or dishes, or even take showers out of concern that the system might back up and send sewage flowing in homes and businesses.
Bush, who toured an emergency center and flooded-out farmland in the Baton Rouge area, praised the government's response to Gustav.
"All and all, the response has been excellent," Bush told workers in a packed emergency command center. "But the people here understand that there is more work to be done.
"A lot had to do with the people in this room. We're much better-coordinated this time than we were with Katrina."
Bush urged utility companies in neighboring states to send extra manpower to Louisiana if they could spare it.
"One of the key things that needs to happen is that they've got to get electricity up, here in Louisiana," Bush said.
BUSH VIEWS DAMAGE
Bush's motorcade passed a Baton Rouge cemetery littered with tree limbs, chain-link fences flattened by powerful winds, darkened traffic lights and electrical workers fixing a power pole the storm had snapped. Fields were flooded and lawns were squishy.
The president didn't see even heavier property damage reported in other areas of Baton Rouge, which had virtually escaped damage from Katrina. His motorcade didn't stop during the tour, and he didn't get out to walk around to view the destruction or visit residents in their homes.
No other hurricane-related events are on the president's schedule for the rest of the week.
To residents who lived through Katrina, the government's response three years ago was still fresh.
"What do I care if Bush is visiting? I'm still trying to get myhouse back together from Katrina," housekeeper Flora Raymond said. "This time things went better, but we still need help from the last time."
Jindal said he won two promises from the federal government that will ease his state's recovery: The White House approved his "major disaster" declaration request, allowing residents of 34 parishes to receive federal funding for housing and recovery, and a strategic oil reserve will be opened to help reverse a severe shortage of fuel, particularly in south Louisiana.
Bush said his administration would be willing to release more oil from the emergency reserve upon request, a decision that prompted criticism from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.She accused Bush of being beholden to oil companies. Pelosi said that for months, the president has ignored bipartisan requests from Congress to release oil from the nation's stockpile to help ease gasoline prices.
Aboard Air Force One bound for Baton Rouge, Bush called Nagin and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and received a briefing from David Paulison, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"Baton Rogue got hit pretty hard," Paulison told reporters on the plane. "They got hit worse than New Orleans did."
STORM'S U.S. TOLL: 18 SO FAR
In the days before Gustav arrived, nearly 2 million people were evacuated from the Louisiana coast. Eighteen deaths were attributed to the storm in the U.S., several of them occurring during cleanup after it had passed. Roughly 1,600 people were killed during Katrina, a far more devastating storm.
Nearly 80,000 people remained in shelters in Louisiana and surrounding states. An estimated 18,000 people fled from New Orleans on buses and trains arranged by the state and federal governments.
Nagin said Wednesday nightthat he hoped the process of returning the city's evacuated residents would begin Friday and most would return by the end of the weekend, depending on weather, roads and rail conditions.
Five people were arrested Wednesday in only the second case of attempted looting in New Orleans since the city emptied. Worried about potential looting of vacant properties, Nagin saidthe city would maintain its duskto-dawn curfew indefinitely.
Information for this article was contributed by Mary Foster, Melinda Deslatte, Michael Kunzelman, Becky Bohrer, Deb Reichmann, Janet Mc-Connaughey, Alan Sayre, Juanita Cousins, Mark Williams and John Poretto of The Associated Press and by Adam Nossiter, Anahad O'Connor, John Schwartz and Thayer Evans of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 8 on 09/04/2008