by Contessa Brewer, MSNBC anchor

Wall St. has always been one of New York City's places to visit, but tourists here today are witnessing something different unfolding.

As I prepare for the MSNBC hour from the financial district, there are crowds taking photographs and people waiting to hear from reporters. Everyone is trying to understand and figure out the U.S. economy in turmoil. NBC's Rehema Ellis has been talking to people, and tells me that most of the folks she's talked to don't really know the specifics of the bailout plan and are waiting for some clarity.

GALVESTON, TEXAS – Galveston was nearly wiped off the map by a September storm.

I'm not talking about this month's devastating storm; I mean the Great Storm of 1900.

At the turn of the 20th century, Galveston was the largest city in Texas. It rivaled New York as a center of trade and commerce. Its port was one of the largest and busiest in the country.

Nothing, it seemed, could stop Galveston's glowing future. Except a nameless hurricane that hit the island on Sept. 8, 1900.

SLIDESHOW: Galveston's weathered past

Isaac Cline, a meteorologist with the nascent U.S. Weather Bureau, tried to warn Galveston residents on that warm, late summer day in 1900. He had noticed that barometric pressure readings along the Gulf Coast had been dropping dramatically.

When water began rising in the streets – just as it had hours before Hurricane Ike's arrival – Cline walked along Galveston's beaches trying to warn people to leave.

Few listened.

Six thousand people died in a harrowing night of wind, rain and storm surge. To this day, the Storm of 1900 remains the nation's worst natural disaster. So numerous were the bodies that they were put on barges and carried out to sea to a watery grave. Others were burned in mass funeral pyres. More than 3,000 buildings were destroyed, including a hospital, numerous schools and an orphanage.

In the wake of such a horrible calamity, many people questioned the wisdom of rebuilding on an island barely above sea level.

But the same advantages that drew early settlers here were still in place: a prosperous port and an established trade center. In 1900, that was enough of a reason for survivors to build an engineering landmark: a concrete seawall seven miles long. They also raised the level of the island 17 feet behind the seawall.

VIDEO: Panoramic movies of Galveston's 1900 hurricane

After the island survived powerful hurricanes in 1915 and again in 1919, island residents must have felt invincible. More recent storms, such as Carla in 1961 and Alicia in 1983, added to the confidence that somehow Galveston could survive any storm.

All that has changed with Hurricane Ike. People who live just blocks from the seawall learned to their surprise that their homes can be flooded with storm surge from the opposite direction – the northern part of the island is not protected by the seawall. In the historic downtown district, Ike's 11 foot storm surge was the highest since the storm of 1900.

Then, as now, city leaders vow to rebuild, but with an eye toward higher building elevations – even behind the seawall – and tougher wind-resistant construction.

Hurricane Ike has reminded everyone here that the seawall, though tough and enduring, is not enough to protected Galveston from a painful past.

Click here for complete coverage of Hurricane Ike

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

By Charles Hadlock, NBC News

GALVESTON, TEXAS -- In the last week, I have stepped over more snakes, run from more rats and have been bitten by more mosquitoes than I care to count.

Thousands of people on Galveston Island fled for higher ground in the wake of Hurricane Ike. So did the snakes, rats and mosquitoes.

How could some of Earth's lowliest creatures survive one of nature's fiercest storms? Somehow they did and they're alive and thriving on Galveston Island. I have the mosquito bites alone to prove it.

The rising surge water forced critters of all kinds to seek higher ground. For residents returning home this week, don't be surprised to find snakes in trees and rats living in dry attics of some of Galveston's grandest homes.

All the water that rushed into Galveston is the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes, says the county's mosquito control director, John Marshall. The water has collected in almost everything Hurricane Ike tossed about. You'll find mosquitoes breeding in old tires, in the trunks of crushed cars and in the hundreds of pleasure boats now sitting on dry land. I even saw a hot tub perched in the median of a road, apparently washed in from one of the hundreds of homes miles away. Talk about your breeding ground!

You don't have to walk very far in Galveston to be attacked by mosquitoes. It doesn't matter what part of town you're in; mosquitoes don't discriminate. All they want is your blood. All they give is a weeklong itch and a chance for an illness like encephalitis.

Galveston County is launching an assault on the mosquito population. Trucks are spraying pesticide throughout each neighborhood. As if that's not enough, three airplanes are also spraying pesticide in remote parts of the island.

Come to think of it, that's not enough. Before you come to Galveston Island, douse yourself with bug repellent. Oh, and watch out for the snakes. And the rats.

WASHINGTON - Army Capt. Humbert "Rocky" Versace is one of 88,000 Americans still listed as missing in action since the outset of World War II, including 1,800 from the war he fought in Vietnam.

Rocky was wounded and taken captive by the Communist Vietcong on Oct. 29, 1963, in the U Minh Forest of South Vietnam. He was never repatriated.

President Bush has honored Rocky and all Americans who were prisoners of war or are still missing in action by proclaiming today National POW/MIA Recognition Day, an annual event held the third Friday in September.

Courtesy of the Versace family

Army Capt. Humbert "Rocky" Versace, seen before he became a prisoner of war in Vietnam.Â

"We will not rest until we have achieved the fullest accounting for every member of our armed forces missing in the line of duty," the president said in a proclamation released on Wednesday.

From the outset of his captivity, Rocky defied his Communist captors.

"Rocky stood toe to toe with them," fellow POW Dan Pitzer said after his own release in 1967. "He told them to go to hell in Vietnamese, French and English. He got a lot of pressure and torture, but he held his path."

Beaten, starved and shackled, Rocky refused to give in to the Vietcong.

"He was the one who set the lead for all of us in the camp," Nick Rowe, another POW, said not long after escaping in 1968. "He was a tough act to follow, but there was nobody in our camp who broke."

On Sept. 26, 1965, nearly two years into his captivity, 28-year-old Rocky Versace was taken out and executed by the Vietcong for his unrelenting defiance. His remains were never recovered.

"He was killed because duty, honor and country meant more to him than life itself," Pete Dawkins, a West Point classmate and retired brigadier general, said in a speech in 2002.

Rocky was awarded a posthumous Silver Star in 1971, but a group of friends and admirers felt he deserved better. They felt he deserved a Medal of Honor.

"Rocky Versace earned the Medal of Honor every day he got up and went on for 23 months," West Point classmate John Gurr said in an interview in 2000. "He was absolutely uncompromising."

The Army eventually agreed and awarded Rocky the military's highest honor "for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty."

President Bush presented Rocky's Medal of Honor to his brother Steve at a White House ceremony on July 8, 2002.

"Rocky's story echoes across the years," the president said, "reminding us of liberty's high price, and of the noble passion that caused one good man to pay that price in full."

Steve said recently that he thinks every day about his older brother Rocky, who had planned to return to Vietnam as a Catholic Maryknoll missionary and run an orphanage he had begun as a soldier.

"That's what he really wanted to do," Steve said, "but he never got a chance."

John Rutherford is an NBC News Producer based out of the Washington, D.C., bureau and is a decorated Vietnam veteran. He also posts stories on the military at www.dailynightly.msnbc.com (click on "John Rutherford" under "categories").

 

 On Clear Lake, Texas – We got a chance to go out on a boat this afternoon to get a view of Hurricane Ike's destructive path from the angle of the water. It also allowed us to see some places you couldn't reach by car because so much water and debris has been pushed in from Galveston Bay.

Clear Lake is sort of a protected inlet off Galveston Bay, we got to the mouth of the bay but it was too rough to go out there in the 26-foot motorboat we were in. 

We went out on the water to try to get an idea of the environmental impact of Hurricane Ike on Clear Lake and it's a mess.

AP

Boats line the road in Clear Lake, Texas after Hurricane Ike on Sunday.

We saw thousands of dead fish floating on the surface of the water. It smells terrible. When the wind is blowing, it's not so bad. But when the wind is calm – the smell of dead fish, raw sewage and gasoline just fills the air and is totally overpowering.

It is all from sewage systems on land, boat sewage systems, plus all of the gasoline. You can see that gasoline slick shine on top of the water in areas – that rainbow look you see when you have petroleum products on the water. It's turned the water a chocolate brown and it's killing fish by the thousands.

VIDEO: Texas tormented by the stench, and cost, of Ike's devastation

We saw all these dead fish floating on the surface. We also saw dead animals – what looked like dead otters, rabbits, and lots of dead birds.

The worrisome part is that the birds, ducks, and pelicans are eating the dead fish because it's easy pickings and they don't realize that those fish have been poisoned.

So the fear is that all of those birds will soon die as well.

I'm not an environmental expert, so I don't know what the long term impact is. But in the short term, it's a disgusting, smelly, dead mess.  

MIAMI – With the destructive arrival of Hurricane Ike in the Caribbean and then in Texas, it's clear that many hurricane lessons from previous storms still need to be reviewed and heeded next time.

In Cuba, where Ike made two landfalls, evacuations were carried out effectively and the loss of life was low compared to other countries. But, houses were in such poor shape and so unprotected that hundreds of thousands of homes and apartments were badly damaged or destroyed and could take years to replace. Something as simple as hurricane roofing straps or window shutters might have helped immensely in many cases – if such materials were ever available. 

SLIDESHOW: Ike's impact

After covering scores of hurricanes in more than three decades I have come to learn that these storms sometimes have a strange way of fooling the experts, often in the last hours before or after landfall, and that there are no acceptable odds in gambling whether you'll narrowly escape the storm. I also know that hurricanes are always dangerous and should never be underestimated.

How many people in Texas now regret riding out this latest storm and swear they'll never do it again. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard that over the years, but take no joy in saying that. The terror and pain in the eyes of storm surge and hurricane eye-wall survivors is hard to forget. I will tell you that I know that fear personally.

In recent years, hurricane evacuation and recovery plans in the United States have gotten so much better, particularly after the Katrina disaster in New Orleans. Florida has been at the forefront of this development and now many other states, along with the federal government, have joined to improve the plan. The coordinated evacuation effort in Louisiana before Hurricane Gustav this year was light years ahead of what happened in 2005.

Texas also mobilized extensively before Ike struck, but those plans are only as good as the people who are willing to follow them. As always, many people this time thought they knew better than the authorities and stayed behind, only to find themselves climbing into a Coast Guard helicopter rescue basket to save their lives.

Emergency management officials have an extremely difficult and often thankless job, because they have to order mass evacuations while the sun is still shining and the winds are still calm. They base those decisions on forecasts from the National Hurricane Center which often change with the unstable atmospheric conditions. It takes time to move hundreds of thousands –sometimes millions – of people, so those evacuation orders have to be issued early.

And when they are proven wrong, because the storm moved away from the evacuation zone, there is then a lot of grumbling and talk of the "cry wolf" syndrome, leading to predictions that next time people won't be so willing to pack up and leave when ordered. For managers trying to save lives, it's the nightmare scenario.

VIDEO: Cuba faces tough recovery from hurricanes

Over the years, many people have asked me what I think about all the hurricanes I have covered and without a second thought I say that it's a complicated relationship. On the one hand, I find them fascinating scientifically and have tried to learn as much as I can about how their tracks and intensities are forecast. I have immense respect for the men and women at the National Hurricane Center and eagerly follow their work.

But, more and more I mostly despise hurricanes for what they do to so many people at once. I often say that if you are not injured, and your loved ones are safe, the worst part of a hurricane is not the storm, itself, but the traumatic years of rebuilding afterward.

When Hurricane Andrew demolished much of South Florida, where I live, I saw so many people struggling to recover – a half million people fighting for contractors and limited building supplies, all at the same time, while living in tiny trailers and spending hours and hours wrestling with their insurance companies. The emotional toll was sky-high, with many reports of domestic violence, depression and other distress.

For the reasons stated above, however, I also believe that covering hurricanes before and after their arrival is very important and serious work. Before landfall, our job is to warn residents in the storm zone of the upcoming dangers. Afterward, our job is to alert everyone else in the country about how badly many of their fellow citizens have been hurt, to report on their needs and to assess the recovery efforts.

For whomever it might help, I'd like to share a few hurricane survival observations made during so many years in the stormy tropics:

First, please get your house in order. A well-constructed and properly protected home is more likely to survive intact than a flimsy structure with no effort made to seal if from the winds. More than anything, shutters are essential – be they wood, aluminum, accordion-style, roll downs or hurricane-proof glass – for keeping the storm out of your house. Once the winds get inside, they have to get back out, and that is how roofs blow away and walls explode. Also, make sure you have enough water, food, flashlights, batteries, medicines and other supplies to last a week.

Second, there is no such thing as a "minimal" hurricane. I've heard many people say, "It's just a Category 1." Trust me, the eye-wall and surrounding winds of a Category 1 can knock you down, put a limb through your unprotected window, topple a tree onto your roof and snap a live power-line and lay it at your feet.

Just last week, my colleagues from the NBC News Havana office and I were in the town of Los Palacios in western Cuba just as the then-Category 1 Hurricane Ike roared through. We saw roofing materials blowing away, slogged through flooded streets, felt the sharp sting of rain on our faces and kept a wary lookout overheard for swaying telephone poles and wires. On the way into town, we had to stop our cars under a bridge for a while to protect ourselves from the fierce wind and blinding rain. All hurricanes are powerful and dangerous.

VIDEO: In the eye of the storm as Ike slams Cuba

Third, watch out for the water – all of it. The obliterated Mississippi coast during Katrina in 2005 taught us again about the unfathomable power of a hurricane storm surge. You must get far away.

And then there is the water that kills more people than anything else – the inland flooding resulting from torrential rain. Most people who die in hurricanes do so after the storm passes, often trapped in rushing water a long distance from the coast.

Fourth, don't be too sure of where the hurricane is going. As I wrote earlier, they can change direction quickly. Few remember this, but Hurricane Katrina hit South Florida first, before taking its fateful aim at the Gulf Coast.

Right after landfall north of Miami, it took an unexpected southerly turn, catching a lot of people by surprise, including my wife, who found herself unknowingly driving though the calm eye of the storm right into the raging winds of the eye-wall. Moments later, a huge tree fell on her car with her in it. She was badly shaken, but luckily escaped injury. I was even more shaken when I got her cell phone call telling me she was under that tree. I was miles away on the north side of the storm covering it for NBC Nightly News and couldn't get to her. There is no more helpless feeling in the world.

And lastly, a point worth repeating. When emergency managers order an evacuation it really IS time to go, hopefully to a safe place that you've picked in advance.

In Florida, it usually means moving inland only a few miles or more. Elsewhere along the Gulf Coast it's a longer trip to safety, but is still absolutely necessary.

If you need convincing, go to Google, type in the words "Waveland, Mississippi" and then hit "Images." Those scenes of utter devastation are real and occurred just three years ago.

If that doesn't do it, find someone who rode out Katrina there and somehow survived. Listen to his or her harrowing tale to know why they won't make that near-fatal error again. And, please, you shouldn't make that mistake, either.

NBC News Correspondent Mark Potter is based in Miami, Florida. He has covered hurricanes in Florida, the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts and throughout the Caribbean for more than 30 years. 
 
Click here for complete coverage of Hurricane Ike

by NBC Weather Plus' Jeff Ranieri

Below is video blog of major storm surge damage in Surfside Beach, Texas where the storm surge started almost 24 hours ahead of Ike's landfall.

This is about 45 minutes south of Galveston.

VIDEO: WATCH VIDEO

On Nightly News Saturday, I was in front of a house that floated into another one -- just one of the very dramatic pictures we'll see as Ike's impact will make itself clear in the next few days.

 BEAUMONT, Texas – With a significant part of the nation's oil refinery industry based here in Beaumont, Texas and gas prices spiking in certain parts of the country like Florida, Tennessee and North and South Carolina, we decided to come here to see how the refineries would stand up to Hurricane Ike.

As of Saturday, the refinery industry had not done a full assessment of the damage from Ike, it will be several days before they really have an idea of how well the plants did. But, early indications are that they were not flooded and that was the greatest concern. 

Beaumont lays to the east of Houston, and is about 30 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, so it escaped the direct path of Hurricane Ike.  

If the salt water had flooded the refineries by breaching the levees in Port Arthur, then they may have been off-line for up to nine to 10  months until they were brought back. That's what happened after Rita and Katrina. That puts a serious crimp on the oil supplies. There is a pipeline that runs up to North Carolina from here and if that is disrupted, it definitely impacts markets.

VIDEO: 'Sleepless night' for Texas residents

But as of now, it does not look like the refineries have been flooded. At least 13 refineries – including plants operated by Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell – shut down ahead of the storm. Experts said it could take up to three or four weeks to bring them back on after the storm.

It's not like they will be powered back up tomorrow, but it doesn't look the damage is as extensive as they feared it would be when Ike was a Category 3 Hurricane barreling down on refinery row along the Texas coast.

A lot of flooding, but town weathered storm
And Beaumont, a town of about 110,000, appears to have weathered the storm better than even the police expected. Power lines, tree and street signs  are down, but  it looks like the serious damage to houses is not there.

However, there is flooding in the outlying areas of Beaumont and that's a problem. The Neches River flows through Beaumont and Port Arthur and into the Gulf of Mexico. The storm surge in the Gulf of Mexico backed right up into the river and overflowed its banks. So you've got homes all along the Neches River that are flooded.

As of Saturday afternoon, the Texas Highway Patrol was out in force on Highway I-10. The road is mostly elevated, but in some of the lower areas, the water has pooled and has created what look like small lakes.  So if anyone is driving along the highway at 40-plus miles an hour and hits one of those, it's like hitting a wall. The highway patrol is out here trying to police the roads,  which are getting more traffic as the day goes on. 

Barbecue and thankfully, no ghosts
At the Holiday Inn in Beaumont, one of the guests evacuated his house and decided to ride out the storm in the hotel.  He brought a giant cooker with him, so this afternoon he set up a barbecue and made some Texas brisket and chicken. And the folks at the Holiday Inn decided to cook up all the food in the freezer of the hotel since there is no electricity. So a long line of guests snaked around the Holiday Inn waiting for a plate of hot food which was some comfort after a long night of howling winds.

A little 7-year-old girl named Samantha told me as she cowered in the stairwell of the building that she heard the howling winds last night and was convinced that the building was haunted.

When I told her it was not haunted, she insisted it was. She said, "I kept seeing people coming in and out of a room on the end of the fifth floor. I didn't know what they were doing, so it made me really scared."

Well, it turns out that it was NBC News people going in and out of our TV transmission room. So at least we were the only ghosts last night.

Click here for complete coverage of Hurricane Ike

 CLEAR LAKE, Texas – After making it through the rough ride of Hurricane Ike last night, we set out this morning to assess the damage.

We headed for a nearby town called Webster and the scene I saw on a little cul-de-sac called Beach Grove Drive was telling. It's an area that is in a flood zone, so most of the residents had left. When we arrived there this morning, a couple of home owners were just coming back and were seeing their houses for the first time since Ike.

They couldn't actually drive up to their houses because there were so many trees down on the street. They were big pine trees – like 70 feet tall – and a lot of them have crashed down in yards and across the streets.

VIDEO: Clear Lake calmer after the storm

But amazingly, on this little cul-de-sac, none of the pine trees have crashed onto houses. There was literally one tree that had fallen right next to a house, not five feet away – if it had fallen differently, it would have crushed the house. So they are all really thankful that didn't happen.

They also didn't get floodwater in their homes like they expected. The water came close; it got in their backyards, but the storm surge has already gone down and so it didn't make it into the homes.

Nassau Bay is another town next to Clear Lake that the police won't even let us into. They have blocked off every entrance. They say it's under water and that it's not safe.  

So the damage is hard to assess. It's about what we expected, although I would say that there are fewer damaged homes than I expected to see.

We expected to see a lot of trees down, and that is the case. We expected to see some power lines down and fences down, and that's all true. But, I haven't seen homes with a lot of wind damage – which is good news.  

It's not good news for everyone here though. Clearly there are going to be hundreds, if not thousands, of homes that have water in them.

And there has been a ton of damage to the boats here. Yesterday we were watching boats all day in Clear Lake. The hotel where we were staying sits right on the lake and there is a little marina next to it that had a couple dozen pretty nice boats.

But as of this morning – many of those boats have sunk. And those that haven't sunk have been seriously damaged because they all broke loose from their docks. They have all been piled on top of each other. One of them – what looked like a very expensive sailboat that was probably 50-60 feet – was actually sitting in a parking lot this morning. 

Click here for complete coverage of Hurricane Ike.

Correction: This original post misspelled Nassau Bay.

By Charles Hadlock, NBC News

At dawn's first light, the devastation from Hurricane Ike is becoming clear.

The Hilton Hotel here in Clear Lake, Texas, where we've set up our satellite truck to report on the storm, is taking a beating.

The stucco facade on the front of the building peeled away during the early hours of the storm.  Of course, it smashed into NBC cameraman Mike Terrel's truck, which had just gotten out of the shop from Hurricane Dolly damage.

The hotel lobby looks like a scene out of the Poseidon Adventure. The plexiglass atrium ceiling came crashing down at about 2:30 in the morning. I had just finished giving a live report on MSNBC and stepped back into the darkened lobby to dry off. I had a towel to my face when I heard a loud popping sound above. Without looking, I ran for a corner of the room. A huge sheet of plexiglass landed right where I had been standing.  I think I was safer outside the hotel. The lobby is filled with insulation and debris. Two giant chandeliers sway perilously above, whipped by the Ike's winds now gusting through the building.

For a time, the lobby  (above) was in danger of being flooded by the rising storm surge on Galveston Bay. The first floor of the hotel, below the lobby, was inundated with water that slowly crept up the stairs toward the hotel lobby. The water got to eight steps away from flooding the lobby when the winds swung around from the north and west and pushed the tidal surge away just in time.

A marina behind our hotel (photo above) had more than 20 boats tied up along wooden piers on Clear Lake last night.

This morning, the piers are gone; and so are most of the boats.

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By Janet Shamlian, NBC News Correspondent

GALVESTON, Texas – In advance of Hurricane Ike's expected landfall here, I spent the morning with one of our NBC crews trying to see what Galveston's west end looked like.

It is a very low-lying area that floods easily, and predictions were that Ike would put it under water. First of all, what I found in trying to get to the end of the seawall is that it was almost an impossible trip.

Already, Seawall Boulevard, the four-lane thoroughfare here, is filled with debris that has been spit up from the gulf as these high waves break over the wall. Everything imaginable, from plywood to beer cans, has been dumped on the road.

VIDEO: Galveston, Tx. already feeling Hurricane Ike

Just traveling three or four miles on the boulevard was a huge strain, and we feared we would end up with flat tires. Moreover, it was impossible to get into the neighborhoods that are expected to be deluged because roads leading in were already impassable.

In fact, we went down one road that was probably a foot or 2 deep in water, but we decided we had to turn around.  By the time we did, the water had already risen another foot.

We didn't see many people on the streets. We had phone numbers for a few people in Galveston's west end who had told us they were going to stay and ride it out. That's who we went to check on this morning. When we realized the roads were impassable, we called them. Thankfully, very early this morning they came to their senses, you might say, and decided to leave.

What's surprising is the enormity of the waves crashing over the seawall more than 12 hours ahead of Ike's predicted landfall.

We are almost locked into our location right now because you just can't get anywhere. But there are still people here who didn't heed the evacuation orders. We saw them – they are out taking photos and driving around town.  I just hope they have some place high to retreat to.

 In Clear Lake, Texas, where NASA is located, locals are bracing for Hurricane Ike. Galveston Bay dumps into Clear Lake, so the fear is that all of that water that ends up in the bay will flood into Clear Lake and the residential areas surrounding it.

"The rising water is interesting because it happens so slowly," said NBC News Correspondent Don Teague as of about 10 a.m. Central Time. "In the case of Clear Lake and Galveston Bay – there are no crashing waves, in fact there are hardly even any white caps right now. It's just that the water keeps creeping higher and higher and higher. It's like a bath tub filling up."

VIDEO: NASA Houston operations relocated

That said, Teague noted that the roads getting out of town are actually very clear and not a problem. Since most businesses are closed and evacuations have been ongoing since Wednesday, most people who wanted to leave town have already done so. Nevertheless, those still there are preparing for the worst.

WASHINGTON - On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, John Yates was standing less than 100 feet from where American Airlines flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon.

"There was just this tremendous boom, and a ball of fire went right over my head," he remembers. "I was blown through the air and ended up probably 30 feet away. The room was instantaneously black. The smoke was down to within a foot of the floor.

AP John Yates, seen in a photo taken on Sept. 2, 2002, when he was still wearing compression garments on his arms and hands to prevent scar tissue from hardening.

"It was painful to breathe. Everything was hot," he said. "There was debris everywhere, and you had to feel with your hands to see where you were going. I eventually made my way out into the corridor.

John spent the next two and a half months in hospitals with burns over 38 percent of his body.

"Top of my head, my face, my entire back, portions of my buttocks, my left leg had second-degree burns," he said. "I had third-degree burns on my hands and my forearms and elbows, which required three skin grafting operations."

I first met John in December 2001 as he was beginning five months of outpatient therapy at Washington Hospital Center's burn clinic.

"This is the toughest part, the no-pain, no-gain portion if it," he groaned as a rehabilitation therapist worked to straighten his charred fingers.

Long road  to recovery
Nearly two years later, John was still getting a grip on life, both emotionally and physically.

"I still have a long ways to go in my psychological recovery," he told me in September 2003. "I see a therapist every week."

He'd gained only limited use of his hands by then.

"I can't make a complete fist quite yet with my right hand, but I'm further along than I am with my left," he said. "My goal is to hold change in my left hand."

Today, John's doing much better, thanks in part to the support of his wife Ellen, but he still has physical and psychological scars that will probably remain with him the rest of his life.

"I've gained a remarkable range of motion in my hands since we last spoke in 2003," he told me recently. "I can make a fist with my right hand, and I've been able to finally hold change in my left hand."

He's still being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder and occasional depression.

"Even on medications, I still have ups and downs," he said. "I still have days when I'm in a bad mood, when I'm in a funk. They only last a day or so, and then I'm back to being me again."

Now 57, John continues his work as an Army civilian security manager, but from offices in Crystal City, Va., not the Pentagon. He returns to the Pentagon occasionally on business.

"I don't have a problem going back into the Pentagon anymore," he said. "The first couple of years, I did. Now it's not so difficult."

He'll be back there today for the dedication of a park in memory of the 184 Americans killed in the Pentagon attack, and then, in about a year and a half, his offices will move out of Crystal City and into the Pentagon.

"Not saying I won't have problems, you know, but I'm better prepared now to go back into the building on a permanent basis," he said. "Doesn't bother me. I can deal with it."

Even though he's convinced another 9/11-type attack is inevitable.

"I just hope we're better prepared," he said. "It's not a matter of if it will happen, but when it will happen."

By John Brecher, msnbc.com multimedia producer

Glide around the floor of the Republican National Convention on Thursday night,  as U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky performs the Adoption and Announcement of Nominee Sarah Palin.

By John Brecher, msnbc.com multimedia producer

Republicans, on their way to Sarah Palin's acceptance speech, share their thoughts about the Alaska governor and her portrayal in the media.

By Don Teague, NBC News Correspondent

It was a little before noon. I was driving through various New Orleans neighborhoods and surveying the situation. For the most part that meant empty block after empty block. All was quiet.

Then I turned down Franklin Avenue in Gentilly Terrace, north of the French Quarter.

"Uh Oh," I said to myself.

I had just driven into what looked like a standoff. There were no fewer than two dozen police officers surrounding a modest white house. There were New Orleans Police, Military Police, Louisiana State Police, State Wildlife Officers, and two police dogs. They all looked serious.

I circled the block, stopped a safe distance away, grabbed a video camera, and jumped out of the car. Standoff's can be tricky, so my first thought was finding some cover in case bullets started flying. Then I noticed that all of the police were standing in the open. There were no guns drawn.

"Well that's weird," I thought. 

I spotted a neighbor watching the action from his driveway across the street. If there had been a gunman somewhere, the police would have moved the neighbor. They didn't, so I cautiously made my way over to him. As I got closer to the house, I noticed even more cops and military police in the backyard.

"Do you know what's going on?" I asked the neighbor.

"Yeah, I thought I heard a noise across the street, so I called the cops."

I looked back toward the white house. A very large police dog was now straining at his handler's leash, clearly eager to find a bad guy.

"You heard a noise, and they sent all of them?" I asked.

"I promised my neighbor I'd watch his house," the man continued, "and I thought maybe I heard some glass break over there."

"Wow," I said, "they're really serious about looting."

"I guess so," the man said. He seemed genuinely concerned, but also a little embarrassed by the fact that what amounted to an infantry platoon of cops had shown up to investigate a noise.

If it sounds like I'm making light of the situation, I'm not. I was here in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina. The lawlessness of that situation was truly frightening, and dangerous.  I'll take too many police over too few any day.

The point is, authorities are doing everything possible to protect not just the people of this city, but also their property. They made a promise to residents that if they evacuated, their homes would be protected.

Ultimately, the police didn't find a bad guy in the house. There was no evidence of a break-in. But I saw plenty of evidence that they're making good on their promise to keep New Orleans secure in the wake of Gustav.

By John Brecher, msnbc.com multimedia producer

Click play to see a variety of people at the Republican National Convention explain why they are Republicans.

By John Brecher, msnbc.com multimedia producer

With the Republican National Convention happening in St. Paul, thousands of Ron Paul supporters held the Rally for the Republic in nearby Minneapolis, even though his presidential campaign is over.

By Jim Seida, msnbc.com multimedia producer

A state trooper passes "Knot a Fantasea" as it rests on Hwy. 90 near Lk. St. Catherine about 25 miles northeast of New Orleans on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008. The boat was blown onto the road the day before by Hurricane Gustav.

By Mike Brunker, msnbc.com writer

Jim Seida / msnbc.com

Corey Qualls hands Chris Algero the nozzle after filling up his tank in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. At left is Algero's son, Chris. Jr.

While nearly all Gulf Coast residents in the path of Hurricane Gustav heeded warnings to leave, many were not waiting Tuesday for authorities to give them permission to return. But for many, that meant persistence in the face of repeated rejection.

Chris Algero  of New Orleans was gassing up his car in Bay St. Louis and preparing to make his third attempt to return to his home. He said he'd already been turned back at Interstate 10 and U.S. Highway 90, in the first instance forced by barricades to turn around and in the second refused entry by sympathetic but unbending Louisiana state troopers.

"It's frustrating," said the 42-year-old veterinarian. "I did a lot of rescue work after Katrina, both of people and pets. They need to let in the people who can help."
Algero, who rode the storm out at his mother's house in Bay St. Louis with his son, Chris Jr., and a friend, Corey Qualls, said it was particularly aggravating to be on the outside looking in because he had spoken to some of his neighbors in uptown New Orleans and heard that "if you're in the city, you're able to move around fine."

With a full tank of gas, Algero was preparing to make his third bid to return, this time by heading west to Interstate 12 and then either heading south on Interstate 55 or continuing on almost to Baton Rouge and then approaching the city on Interstate 10 from the west.
"After Katrina, we were able to move back and forth at will," he said. "This time they're trying to keep a lid on everything."

He also said he thought some authorities might be using scare tactics to keep people from trying to return. For example, he said that while he had heard officials of St. Tammany Parish warn that 90 percent of the parish was without electricity. But when he drove into the parish earlier on the freeway, all the businesses he could see had their signs lit even though they were closed.

"I guess that the 10 percent with power was all along the freeway," he said sarcastically.

by Contessa Brewer, MSNBC anchor and correspondent

My last stand-up in New Orleans

I just left New Orleans, drove across Lake Ponchartrain on I-10. The traffic on the freeway was very light, until we hit the other side of the lake. There, authorities had established a checkpoint and all inbound traffic was being diverted off the interstate. It appeared only authorized vehicles were being allowed through. The officials want evacuees to wait for the all-clear before heading home.

I'm also seeing work trucks heading toward New Orleans, crews prepared to assist in the clean-up and repair.

The damage I'm seeing on my way out of town is minor: Trees down. Siding ripped off apartment buildings. Signs littering the roadside.

I'm also seeing a slew of cars parked on the side of the freeway in rural areas. Presumably, these were people who'd joined the mass exodus before Gustav, but had mechanical problems and were forced to abandon their vehicles.

So I'm saying goodbye to New Orleans and Gustav, and hello to Hanna... heading East for more storm coverage.

By Jim Seida and Mike Brunker, msnbc.com

The French Quarter after dark, the night after Hurricane Gustav crashed ashore. Neon signs beckon to departed tourists. Empty but stirring. A handful of bars open, several of them packed with locals and reporters. Police cruisers splash past in heavy rain, blue lights flashing on near deserted streets as the raindrops play Lee Young on the sidewalk. A curfew is not a curfew.