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PEARL, MS — Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin traveled to Pearl, Mississippi Sunday morning to receive a briefing at the MS Emergency Management Agency on the latest preps for Hurricane Gustav.

FNC’s Carl Cameron was apart of the small media pool who traveled with the GOP ticket. See Carl’s video from the trip above. (Note: Palin speaking with Senior Adviser Steve Schmidt on the tarmac in St. Louis and McCain’s sons Jimmy and Jack walking up the stairs to the plane with Sen. and Mrs. McCain.)

After a brief tour led by MS Governor Haley Barbour, McCain delivered a short statement. Palin did not address reporters.

McCain statement:

“Thank you very much Governor Barbour and, uh, calling hurricane Katrina, I want to thank you for you and your wife Marsha’s heroic efforts when that tragedy struck the Gulf and the state of Mississippi.

We just had, as governor Barbour mentioned, a national update with the president and the four governors whose states are most threatened. Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. It was a thorough briefing. There are still issues and challenges, but the fact is that there is no doubt that there has been, thank God, dramatic improvements since the last tragedy of hurricane Katrina.

The coordination between state, local and federal governments is dramatically improved. Governor Perry of Texas is dispatching C-130s to lakefront Louisiana. They are still in need for search-and-rescue capabilities as they try very hard in the short time remaining to make sure that every citizen is out of harm’s way. There is no doubt that the highway capacities are strained, and as Governor Barbour mentioned the coordination between federal, state and local authorities is dramatically improved.

That doesn’t mean that every thing is fine. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t still challenges and unfortunately some people have chosen foolishly to remain behind. But the communications capabilities are dramatically improved, but frankly, the communications capabilities are still not at the level that we want them to be. I am grateful for the coordination and the effort made these four governors, Louisiana itself obviously among many, many threats in New Orleans is the rising lake levels that could overtop some of the levees along with many other challenges that this almost so far unprecedented hurricane in both size and magnitude is threatening the people of this country as well as on the Gulf Coast.

And as in the past three times out four the hurricanes have made a shift east, and so that the predictability of exactly where this hurricane will hit is still not entirely clear.

We Americans, obviously, I am directing program changes for beginning on Monday night’s activities at our convention. We must redirect our efforts from the really celebratory event of the nomination of the president and vice president of our party to acting as all Americans. We’ll change our program and we’ll be announcing that and the details of it in the next few hours.

But there is very little doubt that we have to go from a party event to the call to the nation for action, action to help our fellow citizens in this time of tragedy and disaster, action in the form of volunteering, donations, reaching out our hands and our hearts and our wallets to the people who are under such great threat from this great natural disaster. I pledge that tomorrow night, and if necessary, throughout our convention if necessary, to act as Americans not Republicans, because America needs us now no matter whether we are Republican or Democrat.

And America needs all of us to do what American have always done in times of disaster and challenge, and that is join together and help our fellow citizens. So I want again, I want to thank Governor Barbour, Governor Perry, Governor Riley, and of course Governor Jindal of Louisiana.

I also want to thank the folks at FEMA and all of the organizations including the volunteer organizations of which there are already thousands that stand ready to assist our citizens. That’s what America is all about.”