Most residents are tired and weary from Hurricane Gustav, but that should not lessen their awareness of Hurricane Ike, Mayor Ray Nagin said Monday.

“I think most people are weary. They just don’t feel like dealing with another hurricane, period,” Nagin said.

He said that while the city was able to stand up to Gustav, if a deadly Ike approaches, citizens should listen to parish leaders.

“It proved one thing, and it didn’t prove another thing. It proved we can handle a category 3 that goes to a category 2. And we did that very well,” Nagin said, alluding to a category 4 storm, which is something he said the city needs to prepare itself for.

“Anything stronger than [a category 3 storm] we need to push for. The corps is saying by 2011, they’re going to finish all their repairs. We need to push them to finish that by the next hurricane season,” Nagin said.

Nagin felt that the state’s and city’s response to Gustav went smoothly. But there was one element that he thought needed work: the reentry plan. He felt that the process was too expedited and didn’t allow for enough services to be set up before residents returned.

“We had an agreement,” Nagin said. “The state was behind it, all the parishes were behind it, that we would going to allow our utilities and our hospitals to get in front of our people getting back.”

He said that reentry was supposed to start Thursday, but that some people “jumped the gun,” speeding up the process ahead of schedule and putting people in the city before the needed services were put back in place.

“We had severe devastation. We needed to have that extra 18 hours to get everything in front of citizens, so that they could come back to something that’s a little more prepared.”

Also, Nagin felt that more FEMA financial assistance, which was essentially non-existent for Gustav for most residents, should be revved up.

“A stipend, a per-diem, whatever would make some sense, especially for people who live on the gulf coast like we do,” he said.

The city won’t have much time to secure that type of funding as Ike approaches the gulf. But Nagin said that it is prepared to meet Ike on the home front.

“It’s something we’re not looking forward to,” Nagin said of Ike. “But the city is in great shape. 99 percent of the city has power, hospitals are in good shape, other utilities, sewer and water board is in good shape.”