BATON ROUGE — The mayor threatened a tough response to those who break the 10 p.m. curfew, as Louisiana’s capital city sought to prevent any looting while struggling with a fuel and electricity shortage four days after Hurricane Gustav.

“If you break the curfew, we are going to arrest you,” Mayor Kip Holden said Friday.

The city saw some early signs of recovery — shorter lines at gas stations, more supermarkets reopening.

But over 70 percent of the area’s residents and businesses remained without power. The darkened homes and streets raised fears of looting — though few cases have been reported. Public schools are not expected to reopen for another 10 days.

Holden said the area can’t begin getting back to normal until utility companies bring power back. Until then, gas generators will remain popular substitutes — further increasing demand for fuel at the few filling stations that have reopened, many of them using generators to pump the gas.

“The utility problem is really the major, major problem that we have,” Holden said.

Category 2 Gustav hit Monday and dumped heavy rain across the state, causing massive flooding in parts of central and north Louisiana that have rarely — if ever — seen hurricane damage. The town of Bunkie, in central Louisiana, had 20 inches of rainfall.

Twenty-three deaths in Louisiana were connected to Gustav, Dr. Louis Cataldie, state chief medical officer, said Friday. Mississippi officials have reported three other Gustav-related deaths.

Gov. Bobby Jindal said he asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to send more trucks of supplies to the region and expected them to arrive later Friday. He also asked public schools and universities to call in their food contractors to prepare hot meals and asked faith-based groups to set up kitchens to feed people who may be without power for weeks.

“We want to make sure there are sufficient supplies and provisions for our people,” the governor said.

Water systems in 47 parishes are under boil advisories until further notice.

Statewide, about 31 percent of the state’s power customers — more than 627,000 homes and businesses — remained in the dark, state regulators said late Friday. Utility companies in Baton Rouge and elsewhere said some customers should expect to wait three weeks for electricity.

“It’s going to take some time, and I think it’s going to take some patience,” said Jeff Kilpatrick, president and CEO of Baton Rouge-based Dixie Electric Membership Corp. Farther south, thousands of people who evacuated Houma before Gustav hit were allowed to return for the first time Friday. Officials discouraged them from staying in the parish past nightfall, when a curfew takes effect.

Dolores Charpentier considered staying the night in her storm-damaged house, even if it was dark and the roof leaked.

But after surveying her battered neighborhood, the 78-year-old decided she’d be better off leaving Houma — 30 miles north of where Gustav made landfall — and driving an hour to stay with her daughter and son-in-law in suburban New Orleans.

“I would feel safer,” she said as her daughter helped transfer shrimp, vegetables and other frozen foods from two freezers into portable coolers.

Nearly 2 million coastal Louisianians evacuated for Gustav, which hit land winds up to 110 mph.

The state Department of Social Services said the state helped 29,000 people evacuate by bus, train or plane; at the height of the storm, 85,000 were in shelters in Louisiana and other states.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said more than 4,000 evacuees, who fled the city with government assistance, returned Friday and he expected up to 4,000 more by night’s end. At least one shelter has been opened for residents who find no electricity when they get homes More may open on Saturday. Gustav caused an estimated $1.7 billion in insured damage, according to projections from state Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon. In Louisiana’s 2005 storms, there were $3 billion in insured losses in Hurricane Rita and $18 billion from Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana.

United Houma Nation Chief Brenda Dardar Robichaux said Gustav dealt a devastating blow to thousands of tribe members who live in Terrebonne Parish. The storm, she said, left dozens of homes uninhabitable. “All we’ve been hearing is about the New Orleans area, and it didn’t hit New Orleans. It hit this bayou community,” she said. “The perception is out there that everything is fine, a bullet was dodged. This bullet was not dodged.”