BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: As the Gulf Coast reels from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the federal government tries to speed up its much-criticized response to the crisis, especially in New Orleans, religious groups are playing a key role in emergency relief efforts. We have two reports. First, Kim Lawton in Washington.

President GEORGE BUSH: This recovery is going to be a long process. It's going to take a lot of hard work and patience and resolve.

KIM LAWTON: As the magnitude of the disaster began to emerge, faith-based groups across the spectrum sprang into action. The Salvation Army partnered with the Red Cross and federal emergency officials to coordinate initial efforts on the ground.

Commissioner TODD BASSETT (National Commander, Salvation Army U.S.): We try to be the first in and the last out.

LAWTON: Commissioner Todd Bassett headed to the Gulf Coast to assess the damage and encourage Salvation Army workers already there. Meanwhile, the Army has suffered its own damage.

Commissioner BASSETT: Right this minute, we are not sure of some of our centers, but we do know that we have lost two of our program facilities completely, one in Biloxi, and that we have lost three of our officers' quarters, and there has been damage to several other of our facilities.

LAWTON: Hundreds of faith-based volunteers rushed into the devastated areas to help with rescue operations, while others mobilized to provide desperately needed food, medicine, and shelter. Southern Baptists initially committed to provide 300,000 meals a day for the next 90 days, but a spokesman expected that number to rise to more than one million. Congregations from almost every denomination opened their facilities and became emergency shelters.

National Protestant, Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim groups all set up emergency relief funds and issued special appeals to aid the victims. Many religious leaders also urged prayers for the victims.

Archbishop THEODORE MCCARRICK (During Service): What our brothers and sisters in Louisiana and Alabama and Mississippi are suffering today is our suffering, too.

LAWTON: Local congregations far from the scene are organizing aid. The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., for example, has asked its pastors and school principals to take in Catholic students evacuated from the hurricane areas.

Archbishop MCCARRICK: We're children of God, and God calls us to have this sense of family, that when someone in your family is sick or doesn't have any water or has too much water or doesn't have clothing, you have to reach out to help, and that's really what moves and motivates our people.

LAWTON: Despite all the efforts, relief officials acknowledge the situation is becoming more desperate.

Commissioner BASSETT: This disaster that we're facing right now has to be the most incredible disaster that has ever been faced in the United States. For us in the Salvation Army, we have never seen devastation this great, and the demand that is being placed on us in turn is one that is taxing us absolutely to our limit.

LAWTON: They're scrambling to meet the immediate needs before they can even begin to look at the monumental task of long-term recovery.

I'm Kim Lawton reporting. Now, Fred de Sam Lazaro in Biloxi, Mississippi.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It's hard to find people anywhere in what was Biloxi's main strip. Today, the carcasses of giant casinos that floated in the Gulf lie tilted on dry ground, lifted clear across the street.

People instead spend their waking hours in very, very long lines -- for gasoline, for water and ice, and, for those at the First Baptist Church, a hot meal.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's third largest relief agency, was among the earliest to reach here, tapping its core of volunteers from across the Southeast.

UNIDENTIFIED SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION VOLUNTEER (Praying): We pray, Father, that somehow through a warm meal, a listening ear, a thoughtful word we would give them the courage to go another day.