State and local emergency officials began to assess the damage Saturday morning along the Texas Gulf Coast after Hurricane Rita made landfall at about 2 a.m. just east of Sabine Pass about 30 miles southeast of Beaumont.

By mid-morning Saturday, Rita was just barely a hurricane, with winds of 75 miles per hour.

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There were reports of widespread damage and flooding in some communities, but Central Texas largely dodged the brunt of the hurricane.

Leon County was under an inland Tropical Storm Warning Saturday morning and Central Texas counties to the east of Interstate 35 were under a Wind Advisory, but residents along and to the west of the I-35 corridor will likely feel little effect from Rita.

President Bush, who monitored the storm at Northern Command in Colorado, flies to Austin Saturday to meet with emergency management officials.

He’ll spend the night in San Antonio.

Utility officials say nearly three-quarters of a million homes and businesses have lost electricity due to Rita.

Houston Mayor Bill White says emergency officials will review the fuel situation and do a damage assessment before announcing when people should return.

The Pentagon is sending five mortuary teams into Texas, but it wasn't immediately clear whether the teams are being placed at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio as a precautionary measure or to respond to deaths in the region.

Houston and Galveston escaped the direct hit that forecasters feared earlier in the week, but there is damage in both cities.

At the height of the storm late last night and early this morning, firefighters in Galveston battled a fire in the city’s historic district.

“It was like a war zone,” a fire department official said.

Wind-whipped flames spread to three buildings, one of which was built in 1905 after the 1900 hurricane that destroyed most of Galveston and killed as many as 8,000.

In Beaumont, windows blew out in the lobby of the nine-story Elegante Hotel.

Strong winds brought down a chandelier and ripped the roof off another section of lobby.

The Sabine County sheriff's department in Hemphill reports a school gymnasium suffered wind damage and ended up with a gap in the roof.

In Tyler County, the police department in Woodville lost its roof.

Warren Junior High School in Warren also has roof damage.

In Pasadena, fire broke out before dawn at a shopping complex. There were no immediate reports of injuries in the blaze at a Dollar General store.

In Jasper County, a house with seven people reported inside floated off its foundation in floodwaters in Kirbyville.

A sheriff's dispatcher said rescue personnel were stuck in the emergency operations center because of the flooding.

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