PERRY, La. – For the storm-shattered Gulf Coast, the images were all too familiar: Tiny fishing villages in splinters. Refrigerators and coffins bobbing in floodwaters. Helicopters and rescue boats making house-to-house searches of residents stranded on the rooftops.

But as the misery wrought by Hurricane Rita came into clearer view – particularly in the hard-to-reach marsh towns along the Texas-Louisiana line – the lasting signs that emerged a day after the storm’s 120-mph landfall were of an epic evacuation that saved countless lives, and of destruction that fell short of the Katrina-size fears.

Meanwhile, President Bush yesterday wrapped up a three-day trip designed to convey hands-on leadership during the Gulf Coast hurricanes and promised to act on military leaders’ request for a national search-and-rescue strategy.

“It’s precisely the kind of information that I’ll take back to Washington to help all of us understand how we can do a better job in coordinating federal, state, and local response,” Mr. Bush told commanders.

Between his departure from the White House on Friday and his return yesterday afternoon, the president attended more than seven hours of briefings in four cities about Hurricane Rita. Today, Mr. Bush is going to the Energy Department to attend a briefing on energy issues related to the hurricanes.

The White House says the president plans to return to the region but gave no details about his travel plans. So far, the president has avoided direct contact with areas affected by the storm, making sure not to interfere with rescue efforts.

“As bad as it could have been, we came out of this in pretty good shape,” Governor Perry of Texas said.

Even with nearly 1 million in the region without electricity, some coastal towns flooded to the rooftops and the prospect of nearly 3 million evacuated residents pouring back onto the highways for home, the news was overwhelmingly positive.

Petrochemical plants that supply a quarter of the nation’s gasoline suffered only a glancing blow, with just one major plant facing weeks of repairs. The reflooding in New Orleans from levee breaks was isolated mostly to areas already destroyed and deserted, and could be pumped out in as little as a week. And contrary to dire forecasts, Rita and its heavy rains moved quickly north as a tropical depression instead of parking over the South for days and dumping a predicted 25 inches of torrential rains.

Most significantly, deaths were minimal – with only two reported so far – largely because residents with fresh memories of Katrina heeded evacuation orders and the storm followed a path that spared Houston and more populous stretches of the coast.

Along the central Louisiana coastline, where Rita’s heavy rains and storm-surge flooding pushed water up to 9 feet in homes and into fields of sugarcane and rice, weary evacuees slowly returned to see the damage. Staring at the ground, shoulders stooped, clearly exhausted, many came back with stories of deer stuck on levees and cows swimming through seawater miles from the Gulf of Mexico.

“All I got now is my kids and my motor home,” said Tracy Savage, whose house in rural Vermilion Parish was four feet underwater. The 33-year-old diesel technician was able to salvage a toolbox and a few life vests, but not much more. “We’ve never had this much water, we’ve just never seen it.”

More than 100 boats gassed up at an Abbeville car dealership yesterday before venturing out on search-and-rescue missions to find hundreds of residents believed to have tried to ride out Rita.

An estimated 1,000 people were rescued in Vermilion Parish, said the chief sheriff’s deputy, Kirk Frith.

Authorities were having trouble keeping residents with boats from entering the parish. “How are you going to stop them from going to their home to check on their dog or something like that?'” Mr. Frith asked.

During a helicopter tour, Governor Blanco of Louisiana, whose Cajun roots run deep in the region, got her first look at the hardest-hit areas.

In Cameron Parish, just across the state line from Texas and in the path of Rita’s harshest winds, fishing communities were reduced to splinters, with concrete slabs the only evidence that homes once stood there. Debris was strewn for miles by water or wind. Holly Beach, a popular vacation and fishing spot, was gone. Only the stilts that held houses off the ground remained.

A line of shrimp boats steamed through an oil sheen to reach Hackberry, only to find homes and camps had been flattened. In one area, there was a flooded high school football field, its bleachers and goal posts jutting from what had become part of the Gulf of Mexico.

“In Cameron, there’s really hardly anything left. Everything is just obliterated,” said Ms. Blanco, who has asked the federal government for $34 billion to aid in storm recovery.

Some bayou residents who arrived with boats in hopes of getting back in to survey the damage to their property were turned away by state officials. But all it took was a scan of the Intracoastal waterway to see a hint of the damage: refrigerators and even a few coffins from the area’s above-ground cemeteries bobbing in the water.

After a briefing with Ms. Blanco in Baton Rouge, Mr. Bush said: “I know the people of this state have been through a lot. We ask for God’s blessings on them and their families.”