The city of New Orleans ... will start to breathe again, ... We will have life. We will have commerce. We will have people getting into their normal modes of operations and the normal rhythm of the city. |
The city of New Orleans has no revenue stream coming in, ... We really are in pretty tight quarters. |
The city of New Orleans is in a state of devastation, |
The city of New Orleans is in a state of devastation. We probably have 80 percent of our city underwater. With some sections of our city, the water is as deep as 20 feet. |
The city of New Orleans is technically -- I won't say the word -- but we're very close to it, |
The city of New Orleans, starting this weekend, will start to breathe again. |
The city will not be functional for two or three months. |
The facts are that the 911 [emergency response] system will be up and operational this Wednesday, ... American Morning. |
The facts are we have electricity in probably 60 to 75 percent of the city -- some sections even as high as 95 percent. The facts are we're repopulating the areas that had little to no flooding. |
The federal government, state government and local government did not have the processes, in my opinion, to deal with a storm of this magnitude, |
The French Quarter is high and dry and we feel it has good electricity capabilities. But since it is so historic, we want to double and triple check before we fire up all electricity in there to make sure, because every building is so close that if a fire breaks out we won't lose a significant amount of what we cherish in this city, |
The housing challenge, both temporary and long term, is the No. 1 issue, ... Pre-Katrina, you could rent a decent place for $400 or $500 a month. Now, some landlords are charging $1,000 or $1,500. |
The levee system is still in a weakened condition, |
The levee systems are very wet, they're somewhat weakened, and any type of storm surge would cause flooding both in our parish and in other parishes. So we're not taking any chances, |
The model that we’re looking for to rebuild this city, is to keep New Orleans unique culturally, unique musically, unique from a people perspective, but economically as strong as an Atlanta, where you have a strong middle and upper class of African Americans, of white folks, of Hispanics, of Vietnamese, |