Gustav is now a tropical storm.

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The National Hurricane Center said the storm's maximum sustained winds have dropped to about 60 mph.

Gustav made landfall on the Louisiana coast Monday morning as a Category 2 storm.

At 11 p.m. Eastern time, the center of Gustav was located about 20 miles southwest of Alexandria, La., and was moving northwest at about 13 mph.

It is forecast to hit western Louisiana later Monday night and northeastern Texas on Tuesday.

Forecasters expect Gustav to decrease to a tropical depression on Tuesday and its storm surge flooding to subside.

7 Deaths Reported

Authorities are reporting seven deaths related to Gustav.

They include four people fleeing the storm who were killed in Georgia when their car struck a tree. A couple in their 70s died when a tree struck their relatives' home in Baton Rouge. Another woman died in an accident driving between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Before arriving in the United States, Gustav was blamed for at least 94 deaths in the Caribbean.

Too Soon To Assess Damage

It could be a while before the extent of the damage from Gustav is known. There's been no word out of the Cajun country west of New Orleans where the hurricane came ashore Monday morning with 110-mph winds. The eye of the storm passed about 20 miles from a port that's a hub for the energy industry, and there are fears that damage there could be extensive.

In New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin said it's too soon to know whether the vulnerable West Bank will stay dry. Work on the levees in that area is years from completion.

Nagin said residents could start returning to their homes within 24 to 36 hours after tropical storm force winds die down, depending on the damage left by the storm, according to The Times-Picayune.

He said roads would likely be opened first to people who left the city in their own vehicles, with the return of people who participated in a city-assisted evacuation program to follow.

However, he urged people to "resist the temptation to say we're out of the woods."

FEMA's deputy director, Harvey Johnson, said the storm's surge could at least partially flood the city. He said the agency expects "a lot of homes to be damaged."

Johnson said because so many people evacuated this time, Gustav shouldn't bring as many deaths as Hurricane Katrina. Still, he told The Associated Press that Gustav "will be a catastrophe by the time you add it all up."

Johnson said about 2 million people have been evacuated from Louisiana, but as many as 10,000 remained in the New Orleans area.

In Mississippi, a 15-foot storm surge flooded homes and inundated the only highways to coastal towns devastated by Katrina.

1M Without Power

The levees may have held up to Gustav, but the electrical grid has not.

More than 1 million customers are without power, almost all of them in Louisiana. And the number is said to be growing. Entergy Corporation said the job of restoring electricity to more than 780,000 of its customers will rival the scale and difficulty of Katrina. It said 134 transmission lines and 78 substations are out of service.

Minor outages involving a total of about 16,000 customers are reported in Alabama, Mississippi, and the Florida Panhandle.

But there's a hopeful sign in New Orleans, where Entergy said almost 30,000 customers have been brought back online. It's not clear how long it will take to restore power to the rest.

Bush Calls Gustav 'Serious Event'

Shortly after Gustav came ashore, President George W. Bush, who was in Texas for briefings on the storm, called the storm a "serious event."

Bush received an hourlong briefing aboard Air Force One. He planned to visit a Texas Emergency Operations Center in Austin and a command center in San Antonio to learn more.

He said he wants to ensure that assets are in place to handle the storm, and preparations are being made to help the Gulf Coast recover.

The president canceled a speech to the Republican National Convention on Monday night because of the hurricane.

Tropical Storm Ike Forms

Meanwhile, the hurricane center said Tropical Storm Ike, the ninth tropical storm of the season, formed Monday over the Atlantic.

At 11 p.m. Eastern time, the center of the storm was about 1,330 miles east of the Leeward Islands.

Ike is moving to the west at about 14 mph with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph.

Some strengthening is forecast and Ike could become a hurricane in a day or two, the hurricane center said.