"This is not going to be easy folks, it's not going to be fast. Recovery is a slow, methodical process," said David Paulison, acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Paulison said mass evacuations clearly saved lives.

More than 1,000 deaths were blamed on Hurricane Katrina, which blasted ashore over Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama on Aug. 29.

In Louisiana's coastal Cajun country, where Rita pushed up to 15 feet (4.5 metres) of sea water 35 miles (55 km) inland, Coast Guard, wildlife wardens and National Guard troops rescued hundreds of people from rooftops or atop water tanks.

In Cameron Parish on Monday, homes lay shredded, cowboys on horseback tried to herd stranded cattle to dry land and hundreds of dead nutria, a beaver-like aquatic rodent that has become a pest in Louisiana, littered the marsh.

"It is bad. Cameron is destroyed. The only building usable in Cameron and Creole combined is the courthouse," Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, commander of military relief operations after Katrina, told CNN. "It is a bad situation."

Officials said 98 percent of Cameron's 10,000 people had evacuated before the storm and no deaths were reported.

Low-lying New Orleans, ruined by Katrina and partly flooded again after Rita swept through, began to allow residents of one of its most devastated neighborhoods to check on their homes.

Some in St. Bernard Parish, allowed back for the first time after Katrina, saw what last month's hurricane had done when floodwaters breached the levees protecting the city and also tore apart a tank of crude oil at a nearby refinery.

'MAKES ME CRY'

"I don't know what I think. Thinking makes me cry," said Diane Delaune, 44, as she stood outside her house and looked at black sludge coating the ground and thick, alien-looking blue-gray mold stretching 9 feet (3 metres) up her walls.

"We'll rebuild and then we're selling the son of a bitch." said her husband Kenny, 51, as he hauled out the couple's few unscathed possessions.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's office warned those returning not to drink or bathe in the city's water, except in the district of Algiers, and not to expect medical services. It urged residents to wear protective gloves and masks.

Evacuees streamed back into Houston, which was spared Rita's worst, and although the return was far more orderly than the chaotic evacuation of the fourth largest US city, traffic was heavy and shops remained low on supplies.

Mayor Bill White asked grocery stores, gas stations and mass transit lines to get employees back as quickly as possible as the region's population swelled toward normal levels.

Rita's death toll jumped to six on Monday, when five people were found dead in an apartment in Beaumont, Texas, from breathing carbon monoxide from a generator, District Chief Jeff McNeel of the Beaumont Fire Department said.

One person was killed in a tornado in Mississippi, and 23 elderly Texans died in a bus fire during Friday's evacuation. Reports of three other deaths in Texas were not confirmed.

Dusk-to-dawn curfews were in force across the coast from east Texas to southwest Louisiana, in places where Rita's 120 mph (190 kph) winds flattened buildings and brought down power lines.

Officials urged residents of largely empty cities and towns to stay away until power and other services were restored. Police warned potential criminals they were on patrol.

"We will not tolerate looting, zero tolerance, zero. We will have night vision capability," said Don Dixon, police chief of the chemicals and gambling city of Lake Charles, Louisiana.

"We own the streets, we will continue to own the streets."

DAMAGE AND OIL

California-based Risk Management Solutions estimated Rita's insured losses would be $4 billion to $7 billion, including up to $2 billion to offshore energy facilities. That excluded new damage in New Orleans, where Rita caused a levee breach.

Katrina caused an estimated $60 billion in insured losses.

The energy industry, already reeling from Katrina, took another shot from Rita as it plowed through oil rigs and into onshore refineries, at times with 175 mph (280 kph) winds.

Two large refineries in Port Arthur, Texas, faced possible four-week outages and at least two others were damaged. Several rigs were missing and Chevron Corp. said a major oil production platform had been severely damaged.

Crude futures jumped on doubts of a quick Gulf oil recovery, closing up $1.63 to $65.82 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.