David Verdi Quotations

For the most part, we generally arrive at this type of story either just after or as the first responders are responding. We're usually standing shoulder to shoulder with the firemen or the policemen or the Marines, which allows us to record the incident. In this story, however, we were here before there was a first responder, and what made this particularly tough was that after Day 2, when it became very apparent to us that there were people in need, there were no first responders that we could see.

If you look on our air, you'll see two distinguishing things, either an NBC News ball cap or an MSNBC News ball cap. Either is fine with us. We'll advertise any way we can.

For us as a newsgathering organization, it really gave us the best information we have ever had forecasting. They told us what to expect, what we'd see, and we prepared for that.

We've never been in a situation domestically like this, where the populace has been cut off from the rest of the world and there's no food and water.

This turned out to be a logistical nightmare because of the distance of the destruction.

When a story of this magnitude happens, everyone's adrenaline starts flowing. I have people calling me that were in Katrina. They were there for a week or two afterward. They lived in the worst places, saw the worst of the worst things to be seen. We gave them a couple of days off thinking they could rest. Now they want to go.

This is why hurricanes are always very difficult to prepare for.

In this instance, I truly believe just having a security presence will keep us safe. I don't anticipate any sort of confrontation in any of our locations.