People began to dribble back after a couple of weeks. After a week, Jefferson Parish invited residents in for a "look and leave," and after a month the mayor invited citizens to return. The city opened the unflooded zip codes first then the others within a few weeks. Many had no place to live so after a quick look they had to leave. Some never returned.

The water was found to be safe to drink six weeks after the storm.

FEMA, the Corps of Engineers and their contractors kept working at clearing the debris, nailing blue tarps over damaged roofs and restoring basic infrastructure. The Corps promised to restore the levees to their authorized category 3 protection levels by June 1, 2006 (they missed this goal and decided to go for 100 year protection by 2010).

Immediate recovery cost a few billion and proceeded much like the recovery from other major hurricanes experienced around the nation. The waste was typical just on a larger scale.