And at ten, or whatever time, in the morning we had the press conference, what we knew is there had been an incident at Three Mile Island, that it was shut down, that there was water that had escaped but it was contained.

Another very strong image from the first day was giving my initial press conference in the morning - going down and finding out that everything I had said, the essence of what I had said, was wrong.

None of us knew what this power plant looked like. We had no schematic drawing.

By Thursday morning, we'd gotten over the worst of it.

I've just announced at a press conference that we're probably going to lose all services over night: sewage, drainage, water, etc., ... I cannot issue a mandatory. I do not have the resources to enforce it. However, I've just made the strongest message possible, and we will have police vehicles and fire vehicles going throughout Jefferson Parish with broadcasting advising people to leave now.

When I started walking and I looked down and I saw on the floor this water, which looked like, you know, water in your basement except it happened to be in the auxiliary building of a nuclear power plant.