(CBS/AP) Hurricane Gustav didn't barrel ashore in the U.S. as the devastating terror everyone feared, leaving some of the 2 million people who evacuated second-guessing their decision to flee.
Better safe than sorry? Definitely, evacuees said. But better home than stranded elsewhere, too.
Impatience at overcrowded shelters around the U.S. Gulf Coast figured to rise Tuesday as evacuees from New Orleans to Southeast Texas waited to learn when buses that whisked them to safety during mandatory evacuations would return to take them home.
"That's the first question everyone is asking," said Jim Rollins, whose First Christian Church in Tyler took in about 140 people from Beaumont. "If you know, please tell me. These people want to go home."
Gustav slammed the Louisiana coastline as a Category 2 hurricane Monday, leaving parts of New Orleans in the dark and threatening some levees. But it fell short of bringing the catastrophic blow many feared, and had been downgraded to a tropical storm Monday night as it moved across Louisiana and toward Texas.
The same storm that evacuees fled now threatened to dump 4-6 inches of rain on parts of northeast Texas, National Weather Service meteorologist Nick Fillo said early Tuesday. The rain could keep many evacuees from going home as quickly as they would like and fray nerves.
Some minor fights broke out at a shelter in Shreveport, Louisiana, where evacuees had been packed together for three days in a vacant store lot.
Others became frustrated simply trying to find a place with a cot available. Kenneth and Leslie Smith, of New Orleans, said they spent a day driving city-to-city before finding an open shelter for them and their three young children late Monday near Dallas.
"Everyone wasn't mean," Kenneth Smith, 36, said. "But you have some people with nonchalant attitudes who, if they were in my shoes, they would want some help."
By bus, by train, by car, CBS News national correspondent Byron Pitts reported the exodus began voluntarily late last week. By Sunday, it was mandatory. An estimated 1.9 million residents of Southern Louisiana fled - almost 90 percent of the region's population. It was the largest mass movement of people in the state's history.
Gulf Coast residents have often been reluctant to evacuate - dreading the bumper-to-bumper traffic, the hassle of finding a place to stay and the expense of gasoline, restaurants and hotel rooms - only to return to an unscathed home.
But three years nearly to the day after Hurricane Katrina hit, many residents were glad to leave ahead of Gustav.
Katrina slammed into New Orleans as a Category 4 hurricane, hitting a city built below sea level and ringed with an aging levee system designed to keep it dry, reported CBS News anchor Katie Couric.
"People didn't really think Katrina would hit," said historian Doug Brinkley. "Everybody watched the blob on their TV screens and many residents, included myself, said you know what? I'll wait it out." That turned out to be a huge mistake, and many painful lessons were learned.
But, by late Monday, those still in shelters around the Gulf simply wanted to get back home.
A mandatory evacuation order for the Beaumont area, where Hurricane Rita roared ashore in 2005, could be rescinded as early as Tuesday morning, Beaumont police spokeswoman Crystal Holmes said.
But even if the order was lifted, Holmes did not know how quickly buses would begin shuttling people home. Gustav was on a path that could bring some rains and gusty winds to Beaumont, but Holmes said officials wanted to be sure there was no severe damage before bringing residents back.
"Judging by Hurricane Rita, if the transmission lines are down and there's no power, do we want to bring people back in this heat?" Holmes said.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry said state officials will continue to watch the weather as Gustav spins west.
"This may not be over with yet because of the potential of a severe flooding up in northeast Texas," Perry said Monday. "But, again, we'll be ready for it."
Nikketa Gillam, 32, fled Beaumont with her family to Austin in three cars with $300 and had already spent most of it on gas. She sat next to a small tree on a folding chair with a cell phone in hand waiting for any news on when she might be able to get home.
"I could've stayed at home for this," Gillam said. "We evacuated, not by choice."
As one family from Beaumont found out Monday, there's a risk to leaving home. Judy Grigg, a volunteer at Southside Baptist Church in Lufkin, said a family headed home early after learning that someone had broken into their home, stolen everything, killed one dog and blinded the other.
"It wasn't her things," Grigg said of the woman. "It was her dogs."
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