Nino Bongiorno closed shop Tuesday.
His Caf?? Nino in Carrollton had no power, and trees in the middle of South Carrollton Avenue blocked traffic.
But Bongiorno said he was impressed with first responders' efforts.
"Everybody was in full force," Bongiorno said. "In fact, I came here at 7 a.m. when the power was on, and I saw police in front of the Rite Aid for the elimination of looting. In front of bank was also police, and in and out was also National Guard. It was well-organized."
But Col. Terry Ebbert, head of the Department of Homeland Security, said the response could have been more organized.
He said that some new emergency personnel didn't know their roles.
"We have to do some exercising to ensure all the new players understand how that all works in an emergency. You don't want to be learning for the first time the roles and responsibility that everybody has when you're faced with an emergency," Ebbert said.
He also said more training is needed to help first responders get more comfortable with a new radio system that lets them communicate across parish lines.
A lighting strike hit a tower wired into the new system, putting it out of service for about three hours.
"The only organization that switched off was the fire department. The police department and EMS continued to run that," Ebbert said. "There are backup procedures that were not followed in that. We have the ability to switch towers. We have the ability to switch to the state system."
Fire Chief Charles Parent said an on-duty deputy made the decision to go to the old radio system.
"Once we went to the old radio system, we were somewhat married to it. We had to wait for things to slow down before we could go to the new radio system," he said.
Parent said his firefighters carry both the new and old radios, and Ebbert said the old system won't be abandoned.
"It's only been on for three weeks, and we won't abandon the use of the old system until we're perfectly comfortable that one. All the technical things are up and running," Ebbert said.
