Police blockaded main routes into town as residents tried to get back to their homes and shops, one day after Hurricane Gustav crashed into Louisiana.

Hospital workers, non-critical city employees and others deemed crucial to reviving deserted communities are being allowed in while everyone else was being turned away until power is restored and streets made safe.

Storm hold-out Willie Sherman did loads of laundry while electric power was briefly restored to his Gentilly district neighborhood.

Sherman rode out Hurricane Gustav in his house, just as he hunkered down for the Katrina storm that drowned his mother while flooding New Orleans in 2005.

"I trust God," Sherman said as he stroked a dog. "If you can't trust him through a storm when can you trust him at all?"

Louisiana officials deflected criticism that the largest evacuation in US history was an over-reaction to Gustav, which dwindled from a "monster storm" to a tamer Category Two tempest by the time it hit mostly uninhabited coastland south of the famed jazz city.

"I can't stress enough how important that was to move people out of harm's way," Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said during a Tuesday morning press conference in the state capitol Baton Rouge.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was adamant that officials were right to sound alarms and get people to safer grounds in the face of forecasts that Gustav would be more devastating than Hurricane Katrina.

Sherman agreed with Nagin, who said that despite a seeming false alarm New Orleans residents are smart enough to judge each hurricane as it blows in and heed future calls for evacution.

"They aren't going to risk losing their lives," Sherman said of New Orleanians. "They aren't stupid."

While uprooted and shattered trees blocked streets the biggest obstacle to people returning to New Orleans was the lack of electric power. Local utility companies said that more than a million homes and business were without power.

"We really dodged one," Jill Abbyad said as she and her husband, Charles, ate by candlelight in their Garden District house Monday night.

While state and federal officials were cautious about when residents might begin returning to storm-battered neighborhoods, the head of St. Charles Parish said citizens might be able to return as early as Wednesday.

Plans are in place to re-open schools in New Orleans and other parishes next Monday.

Nagin said evacuees will be brought back in phases, with city workers and business operators first to open shops and get things working before residents arrive.

"I would anticipate on Wednesday we can start to receive some of our key businesses and hopefully Thursday or Friday our citizens can come back," Nagin told CNN.

US President George W. Bush, whose response to killer Hurricane Katrina in 2005 drew widespread condemnation, was scheduled to visit Louisiana Wednesday to survey the damage.

The US leader has worked to show that he is managing disaster response efforts after Gustav battered the US Gulf Coast and ahead of other storms that may threaten the eastern coastline.

"We recognize that the pre-storm efforts were important and so are the follow-up efforts," Bush told a news conference conference.

"In other words, what happens after the storm passes is as important as what happens prior to the storm arriving."

Gustav hammered the US Gulf coast Monday with ferocious rain and 110 mile (175 kilometer) per hour wind, but the partially rebuilt levees in New Orleans held firm almost three years to the day since Katrina swamped the jazz city.

Gustav fizzled as it moved inland, becoming a tropical depression.

An estimated 10,000 residents remained in the city after nearly two million people fled coastal areas over the weekend -- an exodus authorities described as the biggest evacuation in US history.

At least seven deaths were blamed on Gustav, Louisiana officials told US media, bringing the storm toll to more than 100 dead after the storm battered the Caribbean for days.

The toll for the Caribbean was at 96, with most of the victims killed in Haiti.

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