25 Quotes by Doug Thornton

One guy asked me why we wouldn't just want to tear down the Dome because it harbors so many bad memories of the storm, but we had 30 years of good memories here before the hurricane. It could be a symbol for the rebuilding of New Orleans, something people could rally around.

It's unbelievable. All these big oak trees are just uprooted, everything is brown and the waterline is up to 7 feet on the house. It's like somebody dropped a nuclear weapon and just killed everything. There's not any sign of life. There's no greenery. It's bizarre. It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen in my life.

It's in bad shape. Whether it can be rehabilitated in nine or 12 months is not something I could tell you about now. There's severe damage to the roof (70 percent exposed), severe damage to the electrical distribution systems and a lot of the interior spaces are damaged.

It's very early at this point to speculate about the future of the Dome and whether it can be repaired.

They'll tell us if we should rehabilitate the dome or demolish it and start over.

If you were to walk through it now you would say it's not that bad and could possibly be repaired.

If everything goes well, we will have the dome football-ready in November. The seating areas, locker rooms and press box will be ready and up to NFL standards.