We would really encourage people not to come back [to New Orleans] for at least a week.

Go home and identify all the chemicals in your house. It's a very long list.

We need to recognize we may be about to experience our equivalent of the Asian tsunami, in terms of the damage and the numbers of people that can be killed.

If we don't undertake the levee reconstruction and coastal restoration, we're just leaving New Orleans more vulnerable than it was before.

My concern was that the focus was not on protecting Louisiana.

It's going to be days before they get all that water out.

They should have been monitoring this and informed people all the way to the top, then they should have warned people.

For people to feel confident about coming back again, they're going to have to rebuild the levee system.

He tried the best that he could, under the circumstances.