James Bone in Lafayette, Louisiana
The first of two million evacuees have begun picking their way through felled trees and downed power-lines to return home in the wake of Hurricane Gustav, which was blamed for at least eight deaths after crashing into America's Gulf coast.
Restless evacuees set off after darkness despite a dawn-to-dusk curfew in New Orleans and across most of the Louisiana coastline, taking the risk of being turned back at police barricades.
Maureen Rogers and her husband Claude left the electricity-less hotel where they spent the storm in the inland town of Lafayette to try to drive home to their home in Lydia, about 25 miles away towards the coast.
"We have had a lot of hurricanes we have gone through. You have got to pack up and leave. Then you go home and have got to unpack and you have work for days ahead of you," Mrs Rogers said.
"My niece's husband is a line-man for the power company. He checked it out and it was okay. We do not have electricity, but everything else is alright," she said. "I just have my neighbour's trampoline on top of my shed. All the skirting of my mobile home is blown out."
At least eight deaths were attributed to the hurricane, including a family of four who died in a car crash as they evacuated to Georgia and an elderly couple who were killed when a tree fell on their daughter's house in Baton Rouge, where they had taken refuge.
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