Traveling Texas for a close-up look at hurricane preparedness shortly after Hurricane Gustav came ashore, President George W. Bush called the Category 2 storm a "serious event."

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Bush is in Texas for briefings on the storm, which came ashore Monday near Cocodrie, La., just before 10 a.m. as a Category 2 hurricane.

Bush received an hourlong briefing aboard Air Force One. He's visiting a Texas Emergency Operations Center in Austin and a command center in San Antonio to learn more.

He said he wants to ensure that assets are in place to handle the storm, and preparations are being made to help the Gulf Coast recover.

At noon, the storm's center was about 65 miles southwest of New Orleans. The Category 2 storm was moving near 15 mph, with maximum sustained winds near 105 mph.

The president canceled a speech to the Republican National Convention on Monday night because of the hurricane. But Laura Bush has decided to speak as scheduled.

On the morning talk shows Monday, the first lady said lessons have been learned from Hurricane Katrina.

She told CNN that "mistakes were made by everyone" at all levels of government in the handling of Katrina three years ago. She said communication was poor among local, state and federal officials.

But she said, "We have taken care of that."

As Gustav crashed into the Louisiana coast Monday, waves overtopped New Orleans' industrial canal in the Upper 9th Ward.

As of 9:40 a.m., Industrial Canal levees remained unbroken. Meanwhile, city officials reported two ships broken loose from their moorings and careening down the same waterway. The Lower 9th Ward was destroyed by flooding three years ago when a levee along the same canal broke during Hurricane Katrina, WDSU-TV in New Orleans reported.

Gustav brought punishing wind and sheets of rain to the area. Officials were watching Gustav's storm surge closely. While the levee system in New Orleans has been shored up since Katrina, there's concern about the city's west bank, where repairs have not been completed yet. A surge of 4 to 6 feet is forecast.

Gusts snapped large branches from the majestic oak trees that form a canopy over St. Charles Avenue, and tens of thousands were without power in New Orleans and other low-lying parishes, but officials said backup generators were keeping city drainage pumps in service.

FEMA Expects Levees To Hold

Federal emergency officials said they expect New Orleans' levees to hold up to Hurricane Gustav, but that doesn't mean there won't be flooding.

The commander of the Army Corps of Engineers' hurricane protection system said there are some "overtopping waves" splashing over the levees. But he said he's "cautiously optimistic and confident" that there won't be a "catastrophic wall failure."

FEMA's deputy director, Harvey Johnson, said the storm's surge could at least partially flood the city. He said the agency expects "a lot of homes to be damaged."

Johnson said because so many people evacuated this time, Gustav shouldn't bring as many deaths as Hurricane Katrina. Still, he told The Associated Press that Gustav "will be a catastrophe by the time you add it all up."

Johnson said about 2 million people have been evacuated from Louisiana, but as many as 10,000 remain in the New Orleans area.

Katrina was a Category 3 storm when it hit the Gulf Coast three years ago. Gustav was downgraded to a Category 2 storm Monday morning as it neared the coast.

FEMA said it's ready to distribute cartons of food, water, blankets and other supplies to sustain 1 million people for three days.

Forecasters said Gustav was expected to weaken after it moved inland later Monday.

Stay Or Leave?

A hurricane warning remains in effect from near High Island, Texas, eastward to the Mississippi-Alabama border.

In Gulfport, Miss., waters were being pushed ashore and across U.S. 90, but so far no flooding of homes had been reported.

A Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokesman said thousands of customers are without power, but they don't even know it since "there's nobody there."

Tens of thousands of south Mississippi residents have fled north, and the ones who stayed behind hunkered down and hoped for the best.

In Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, officials said they know of only a dozen people refusing to evacuate. A sheriff's spokesman said it's not people in their 20s feeling invincible either. He said some older people who have survived previous hurricanes also are sticking around.

But he said Gustav "is a little more dangerous."

Making the rounds on the morning news shows, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said lessons from Hurricane Katrina three years ago have been learned and can be summed up as: "Planning, preparation and moving early."

Chertoff said Bush is "very focused" on Gustav and the federal response to it.

Hanna Now Hurricane

Hanna became the fourth hurricane of the season Monday.

At 1:30 p.m., the center of Category 1 storm was located near Mayaguana Island in the southeastern Bahamas. It was moving west-southwest near 5 mph, with maximum sustained winds near 75 mph.

Hanna is the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.