The St. Tammany Parish Command Center couldn’t be at a more fitting location. Fort Pike, built two hundred years ago to provide protection against the British, now stands as a sentinel in the battle to fight the biggest oil spill in American history. All day boats come and go in sight of the historic fortress. Vessels of opportunity are going out to place boom. Fisherman who have jury-rigged their boats to drag for oil instead of shrimp feel like they’re in the fight of their lives. But to a man, they seem optimistic—they’ll come through this.

Although a storm is swelling in the Caribbean, much progress has been made in the the effort to end the massive spill. For starters, oil isn’t spewing into the Gulf anymore—and hasn’t been for almost a week. Whether that continues depends on the integrity of the well. And, so far, so good. Scientists are confident enough to keep extending the original well pressure test by 24 hour increments. The well pressure isn’t as high as they’d like it to be, but it’s building, if slowly. And they’re looking at the next steps. Right now, the relief well has been plugged in case that storm blows into the Gulf, but it’s achingly close to the main well. Once the relief well is safely cemented, National Incident Commander Thad Allen may decide to allow BP to pump drilling mud into the top of the broken well. BP says now that there’s a tight fit on the top of that well, mud pumped in from the top has the potential to kill the well altogether- or at the very least, make it easier to complete the relief well.

Turning off the spigot of the spill is a long time coming and much of the damage has already been done. The oil is out there and all it takes is a quick shift from a fickle Mother Nature to have winds pushing the oil back in the bayou. But for the men and women working to save their coasts—like the people at Fort Pike — we hear the same thing over and over again: “We’ll make it. We’ve been knocked down before and we just get back up again.”