New Orleans Mayor: Don't Hurry Home Quite Yet

By Pamela Mortimer

Hurricane Gustav hit land on Monday, making its presence known with 117mph winds. Early reports claim the storm produced a surge of nearly 8 feet above the normal tides, but the storm was not nearly as destructive as the city had feared. Gustav made a token effort to test New Orleans’ levees before losing some of its strength Monday afternoon.

The breach of the Industrial Canal levee flooded a portion of the Upper Ninth Ward and some of the streets were closed. There have been no reports of damage to the canal. More than 80,000 homes and businesses are without power, and the city's sewage system was damaged.

Mayor Ray Nagin cautioned that Tuesday would be too early for residents to return to New Orleans, but their homecoming was "only days away, not weeks." The mandatory evacuation order for New Orleans is still in place.

Waves topped the Industrial Canal levee, a structure directly opposite the levee wall that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. "We saw some overtopping waves," said Col. Jeff Bedey, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers' hurricane protection office. "We are cautiously optimistic and confident that we won't see catastrophic wall failure."

Nagin said it would be unclear if the West Bank would remain unscathed. Because the completion of levee enhancements is still years away, Nagin was eager to evacuate the residents – just in case. But before giving residents the all-clear, engineers need to inspect the levees to be sure they're going to hold.

"There's no indication of any walls in distress," said Robert Turner, regional levee director for the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East. "No trenches are being cut that will destabilize the walls. No indication of walls deflecting or anything being washed out. No evidence of major seepage."

According to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, search and rescue efforts would be the top priority should one of the levees break. Participating in the efforts will be helicopters, helicopters and fixed-wing planes, high-water vehicles, Coast Guard cutters, and a medically equipped Navy vessel.

"Certain of the levees, for example the 17th Street Canal, are now protected by a barrier," he told FOX News. "So they’re much more secure that it did three years ago, but there are for example levees in the West Bank which were not tested by Katrina, which have not been fully brought to the level that they would be in 2011, so there’s a potential vulnerability there."

"Right now, we feel we're not going to have a true inundation," said Karen Durham-Aguilera, director of the $15 billion project to rebuild the Army Corps of Engineers' levee and floodwalls in and around New Orleans.

Although the storm is on its way out, Nagin urged everyone to "resist the temptation to say we're out of the woods."