Associated Press
 
September 1, 2008
 
NEW ORLEANS -- Gustav has weakened to a tropical storm as it crosses central Louisiana.
 
The National Hurricane Center says the storm's maximum sustained winds have dropped to about 60 miles-an-hour.
 
New Orleans' mayor says he feels 'really good' about his city's improved levee system, which withstood a glancing hit by Hurricane Gustav. Mayor Ray Nagin thinks it will be just days, not weeks, before the city's evacuees can return.
 
Authorities are reporting seven deaths related to Hurricane Gustav. They include four people fleeing the storm who were killed in Georgia when their car struck a tree. A couple in their 70s died when a tree struck their relatives' home in Baton Rouge. Another woman died in an accident driving between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Before arriving in the U.S., Gustav was blamed for at least 94 deaths in the Caribbean.
 
But however easy the "Big Easy" got off, there's still some serious damage. Hospitals are working with skeleton crews on backup power, and a mandatory evacuation order and curfew remain in effect.
 
Meanwhile, there was damage elsewhere in Louisiana. A levee in the southeast part of the state is on the verge of collapse. As many as 300 homes in Plaquemines Parish are threatened. Officials are scrambling to fortify the levee.
 
And while the levees may have held up to Hurricane Gustav, but the electrical grid has not.
 
More than one million customers are without power, almost all of them in Louisiana. And the number is said to be growing. Entergy Corporation says the job of restoring electricity to more than 780,000 of its customers will rival the scale and difficulty of Katrina. It says 134 transmission lines and 78 substations are out of service.
 
Minor outages involving a total of about 16,000 customers are reported in Alabama, Mississippi, and the Florida Panhandle.
 
But there's a hopeful sign in New Orleans, where Entergy says almost 30,000 customers have been brought back online. It's not clear how long it will take to restore power to the rest.