Shreveport

There's a simple way of finding out whether your electricity supply has been restored when you evacuate for a hurricane: leave your answering machine on, and call at regular intervals until it responds. We don't have one, but I phoned the neighbours today and they said the power had just come back on, so we're leaving for home tomorrow. The house is undamaged, apparently, but there's a lot of debris lying around.

Gustav has been a wonderful demonstration of the power of the internet. I've been keeping a close watch on www.nola.com, the website of our excellent local newspaper, the Times-Picayune. They've been publishing every day throughout the storm and giving the paper away as a PDF, and they also have local forums for every district of New Orleans, mostly populated with hundreds of messages from evacuees asking whether the power has been restored on their particular block.

One woman on our local Marigny-Bywater forum stayed at home during the evacuation and invited people to send her their addresses, so that she could go and photograph their houses to provide reassurance that they hadn't blown away.

I'm immensely grateful to Bill, Marnie and Garett for putting us up in such comfort for over a week. The local TV stations have been showing footage of the alternative, the hurricane shelters in Shreveport, which makes for pretty grim viewing. Visitors are greeted with the stench of urine and vomit, and showering facilities have been woefully short - a source of considerable local controversy.

Several people were arrested after a fight broke out in one shelter, and some inmates have been demonstrating against the unpleasant conditions. I have some sympathy with their plight, but 96 percent of respondents to a local TV survey thought the refugees were ungrateful whiners who shouldn't come here if they didn't like it.

There's a small but significant chance that we'll be back in Shreveport in the not too distant future. Hurricane Ike, the next but one in a queue of tropical disturbances backed up across the Atlantic, could be heading for the Gulf of Mexico.