'I'm going to need some help' says 90-year-old

By Al Henkel, NBC News Producer

GALVESTON, Texas – It was a bad morning for 90-year-old Doris Rose. She came home today, and found life turned upside down.

Doris left Galveston Island the Wednesday before Hurricane Ike came ashore. "Plenty of time," she said. "I leave every time a storm comes. I've got more sense than that."

So she carefully locked the doors on her little pink house, piled into the car, went to her daughter's house in Houston, and rode out the storm.

Those carefully locked doors had to be forced open today when Doris and thousands of other Galveston residents returned home for the first time since their city was hit by Hurricane Ike on Sept. 13. The back door is still stuck, warped and swollen by the eight feet of storm surge that swept through Doris' house.

She has lived on the island since World War II, in this house since 1970, and has seen what the Gulf of Mexico can do to her beloved Galveston Island. "We've been through lots of storms, this one is the worst," she said.

The house has seen a little water before, but today Doris found mud, black mold, sodden furniture, clothes, pots, pans, and a smell that defies description.

Everything in the once-neat little house is now simply garbage and flood debris.  The house won't be her home for a very long time.

"I'm going to need some help," she said. But there is no talk of leaving this little house; just talk of when she will be back.

"I'm blessed to be here," she said, even while standing in the stinking heap of debris that was once her living room.

VIDEO: Struggling to grasp the magnitude of loss in Galveston