Some Web sites to check before you get back on the road (and note that Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Charles, St. Tammany and St. Bernard Parishes are all closed until at least Wednesday):

- Louisiana official emergency Web site: Lots of information about parish openings, highway closings, curfews, state government office status reports, etc.

- Louisiana Department of Transportation: Interactive maps with road closings, alerts, lane closures, etc. Pretty detailed information.

- City of New Orleans: Not the most current info, but worth checking.

- Jefferson Parish:

Over 120,000 Entergy customers lost electricity and tours of the parish by Parish President Aaron Broussard, Parish Council members and parish work crews revealed the extent of damage. Power lines and poles are down, some blocking streets, and many traffic signals are down and blocking some intersections. Trees are toppled and many tree limbs and other debris are obstacles on roadways and some billboards were shredded by the storm.

Although a number of fences were pushed over by high winds and there was some damage to metal structures such as carports and storage sheds, most residences and businesses were spared major damage and there were no reports of street or structure flooding outside of the communities of Grand Isle and Lafitte.

The parish is working with surrounding parishes and the State of Louisiana on re-entry but the parish remains under a mandatory evacuation order and residents will not be allowed to return tomorrow, Tuesday, September 2.

Parish public schools will remain closed this week and Archdiocesan school officials said they will concur with the civil authorities regarding reopening of Jefferson Parish parochial schools, which will also remain closed through the end of this week. An announcement regarding all phases of re-entry will be made tomorrow so that all citizens and businesses can return to the parish this week.

- City of Kenner:

With the passing of major winds today, Kenner city officials have turned their attention to serving curious residents.

The city’s emergency command center opened three new phone lines to handle the inundation of phone calls. If residents cannot get through using 504.468.7200 or 504.468.HELP, they can use 504.712.2399, 504.712.2333, or 504.712.2334.

Authorities are keeping an eye on Kenner’s sewerage, drainage and levee systems, but so far no flooding has been reported, authorities said. Power is still out in most of the city and the mandatory evacuation remains in effect. No word on when residents can plan on returning to their homes.

Michael Lewis, the author of Liar’s Poker and a number of other books, is both a New Orleans native and a writer for The New York Times Magazine, and he has filed a report from Uptown, where he and his wife rode out the storm at his sister’s house:

One day someone is going to study the difference between our culture’s ability to process and respond to earthquakes (which strike without warning and so are of little use to cable news networks) and hurricanes (which might as well have been created with MSNBC in mind). The buildup, the uncertainty, the waiting — the narrative structure of hurricanes lends itself to melodrama. Click from the New Orleans local news — fairly sober analysis of the city’s chances, which the local weathermen concur are pretty good — to the cable news — where all bad news is actually good news, as it excites cable news viewers — and you get the feeling they are talking about different storms. New Orleans is safer from Gustav than it is from Geraldo.

There’s more at the link, all very New York Times-ish.

Image lifted from WWLtv.com; Photo by Michael Ainsworth/MDN Photo Staff

Really great picture from a great picture gallery over on WWL-TV’s Web site. What can you say other than maybe Fox News is looking to get rid of Mr. Rivera? Or maybe the brass over there actually think this is good journalism? I think the people at WWL-TV have figured out best:

Geraldo Rivera of Fox News does stand up over the industrial ship channel during Hurricane Gustav on Monday.

I hear Geraldo Rivera is the Carlos Mencia of terrible telivision.

On September 1, 2005, I had a mental flash and Googled “Hurricane Katrina T-shirt.” Surprisingly, there was nothing yet (though there was, of course, within a week… and Katrina- and recovery-related domain names were already being bought up.)

This time around, the culture vultures are much savvier, and speedier.

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Our resolve to ride out the gust of Gustav scuttled by a creeping awareness of what it might mean to live in a first-floor apartment two blocks from the Industrial Canal, my boyfriend and I loaded up the dog and headed out at about 3:30 yesterday afternoon. After an hour of sitting in the well-documented misery that was I-59 in the waning hours of contraflow, we got off as soon as we reached an unblocked exit, just past the Mississippi border. Now I’m suffering what I’m going to call contraflow survivor guilt. The road we took - Mississippi Highway 43 - was completely devoid of traffic. As in, we would maybe see another car every half hour, at most. We tore down the two-lane blacktop through scenic rural Mississippi at 65 miles an hour, reconnecting with I-55 near Jackson, and had smooth sailing the rest of the way to Memphis. Our total road time was just under eight hours, only two hours longer than the same trip under normal conditions. I may never drive on a major interstate again. It might be a little late for this advice, but (knock wood) if this ever happens again, use those maps creatively. Or ask Mapquest or your GPS to program your route without interstate highways. It’s literally the difference between hell on earth and a nice Sunday drive.

Everywhere we’ve been, Memphis treats us, oddly, as if this is a reunion of sorts for the events of three years ago. Bartenders are reminiscing about their Katrina evacuees. We’re staying wth friends who evacuated here in ‘05, lost their Lakeview home and never returned. And I’m sitting in the same Starbucks I made home base after Katrina, overhearing conversations from New Orleanians and feeling like I’m sitting through a lame sequel.