The recovery is also progressing at a crawl in the hardest-hit places nearer the coast. In Bay County, which includes Panama City and Mexico Beach, vehicle traffic regularly comes to a standstill, utility trucks block roads, and spray-painted pieces of plywood stand in for missing street signs.

But the crowds have dwindled somewhat at places in the county offering free food and water, and lines for gasoline are easing every day. Cellular phone service — still at just 66 percent of normal on Sunday — has been improving. A high school football game was played on Saturday, and public schools were expected to reopen no later than the week of Nov. 12.

On Friday night in Panama City Beach, a band played at a cafe known as Dat Cajun Place while servers brought out heaping platters of shrimp Creole and bread pudding.

There were a few reminders, though, that life had not fully returned to normal: Utility workers filled a few tables, bottled water was served because of contamination fears, and last call was at 8:30 p.m. on account of the local curfew.

Mr. Andreasen thinks he can relax Jackson County’s 7:30 p.m. curfew next week. But even as he tries to kick-start normalcy in the county, he is beginning to grapple with the years of recovery that loom ahead, and the toll it has taken on his own family, which has relocated over the state line to Enterprise, Ala.

“I was talking to this girl the other day who told me how she had lost everything,” he said — his voice suddenly choking with emotion.

“Then I realized I’d lost everything, too.”