MS. PERINO: Good morning, everybody. We're on our way to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Just two quick phone calls to update you on, and I think that on the other end, they already mentioned this to the press so you won't necessarily need to do a wire call if you don't want to.

President Bush, after takeoff, spoke to Governor Barbour and Mayor Nagin, and then he had a briefing by Dave Paulison, the Director of FEMA, and Gail McGovern is also on board again, and she is the President of the Red Cross.

So I'll turn it over to Dave and he'll give you a little synopsis, and then I'll answer other questions. ADMINISTRATOR PAULISON: Thanks. Seems like we just did this. (Laughter.) I think the response site went very well, the evacuations went well, very well organized; very pleased with what I saw, all the communication back and forth between the federal, the state and the local going on.

So now we're in the life protection and life-sustaining mode, making sure we have the tarps down there for the homes, we have water, food, cots, blankets, all those types of things we're going to need. People are starting to move back into some of the parishes. We would caution people not to move back in until their parish president says it's safe to move back in. A lot of the areas -- most of the areas don't have electricity; some of them don't have water, and there's no infrastructure in place. There's no grocery stores, gas stations, those types of things.

So what we would tell people, if they're in a safe place, to stay right there until this stuff starts coming back online, because otherwise, they're going to come back in and be a burden on the community, because there is no place to buy groceries or get fuel, or anything like that.

If they do come back in and their parish president says it's time to move back, I would recommend bringing food with your, bring water with you, to make sure you have enough to take care of yourself and your family for a few days until the whole system gets back up and running again.

Most of the hospitals have generators; they're up and running, taking care of the patients. Mid-City Hospital, we had to evacuate this morning because their generator went down. But those patients are already being taken care of.

So, pleased so far with everything. We're going to have to stay on top of it. Obviously with people coming back in and the lack of power -- it's going to be quite a while before power comes back up and running. Now, you guys have been through the drill before. You know what hurricanes do to the power lines. So we caution people not to come back in until they're sure that their parish has power, has water, sewer, and all those types of things it takes to survive.

seen at 09:00, 3 September in Whitehouse Press Briefings. Email this to a friend.
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