TAUNTON, Mass. (AP) – It was 3 a.m. when Mayor Bob Nunes picked up the phone and heard the police chief on the other end telling him the Whittenton Pond Dam had buckled, threatening to send a 6-foot wall of water through his city’s downtown.

“I said, God save our city,’ got in the Jeep and drove to City Hall,” Nunes recalled.

The dam, which has held back the Mill River for more than 150 years, threatened to burst this week after the river swelled from more than a week of heavy rain.

The crisis made for a busy and stressful week – not only for the city’s 56,000 residents, but also for its home-grown mayor.

Nunes spent countless hours coming up with contingency plans. He ordered the evacuation of nearly 2,000 residents, closed the downtown and canceled school as experts scrambled to come up with a plan to relieve the pressure on the timber dam without further weakening the 173-year-old structure.

Over the next few days, Nunes met constantly with engineers, dam experts and emergency management officials to assess water levels in the river and the current condition of the dam. Nunes also had to decide whether he should allow residents and business owners to return.

For three straight days, the answer was no,’ even as some merchants grew impatient while they continued to lose revenue. “All I could think about is what would happen if that dam went – it would be catastrophic,” Nunes said.

Taunton is a classic New England mill city located at the confluence of the Taunton and Mill rivers, about 35 miles south of Boston. Nunes became well-known to Massachusetts residents as he offered regular briefings, often carried live on television, about the deterioriating dam.

Nunes held four news conferences each day to keep the public informed. He also gave countless interviews to local, state and national media outlets that were sometimes anxious to compare the comprehensive response in Taunton to the widely criticized response to the disastrous flooding along the Gulf Coast from hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

“Everyone has learned from Katrina,” he said, “but I don’t want to compare this to Katrina because you can’t even compare it.”

“If we did not have (an emergency management plan) in place, we would be in serious trouble,” he said.

The emotional toll of the last week is evident on Nunes’ face. During an interview with The Associated Press, Nunes, 45, looked weary and slightly disheveled. His eyes were puffy from a lack of sleep, his voice hoarse from constant meetings.

“I never thought we would be in the situation we are in today,” he said.

On a visit to the dam Thursday, Nunes stopped to talk to a man who lives about 150 feet from the dam, but upstream enough to be just outside the evacuation zone.

“Hopefully it will be over soon,” Nunes told the man.

It is this personal touch that has helped him win five elections and left him without an opponent for a sixth term. Nunes was first elected as mayor in 1991, at the age of 31. He served four two-year terms, then took four years off before running again in 2004. In January, he will become the longest-serving mayor in the history of Taunton, a working-class city of 56,000.

The crisis has enhanced his image among some residents.

“I support him in what he’s doing – it’s better to be safe than sorry,” said Bob Doherty, 81, a lifelong Taunton resident.

Doherty said he decided to vote for Nunes after he showed up at his door in a rainstorm during a campaign in which Nunes knocked on more than 7,000 doors.

“He was like a wet cat – soaking wet – standing there. I said, He must really want the job,’ ” recalled Doherty.

Nunes’ interest in government and politics started long before he ran for mayor. In high school, Nunes regularly attended School Committee meetings, just to see how things worked. He began volunteering for political campaigns while in college, eventually becoming a volunteer for U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s 1980 presidential bid.

He worked at the local Stop & Shop to pay his way through Suffolk University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in government in 1982. He worked in state government for nine years and served on Taunton’s City Council, then ran for mayor of the city where his grandparents settled a century ago after leaving Portugal.

There is no rest in sight for Nunes. Weather forecasters are predicting several more inches of rain for Taunton over the weekend and possibly more early next week, depending on the course of Hurricane Wilma.

Nunes allowed residents to return to their homes late Thursday, but warned that additional evacuations may be needed if the weekend rain causes additional problems. On Friday, crews began working to build a new rock dam just downstream from the damaged dam. Officials said they planned to dismantle and dynamite the old dam on Saturday, before the rain hits.

Known as “The Silver City,” Taunton was once a major silver manufacturer, home to two dozen silver companies, including Reed & Barton and Poole Silver. The city also was a hub of textile manufacturing, including the Whittenton Mill, one of the largest garment factories in the Northeast. The mill was powered by the dam that threatened to burst this week.

Taunton’s mills drew thousands of immigrants from Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Poland in the 19th century.

Russell Murphy, 74, a retired custodian whose parents and maternal grandfather worked in the Whittenton Mill, recalled the city’s more prosperous times.

“It was a really nice city. Almost everyone in that area worked at the mills, and they were very active then,” he said.

The mills began closing during the Depression and through World War II, when owners found they could have lower labor and production costs in other parts of the country or overseas.

“It cost a lot of people jobs they had had for years and years. They had to find jobs somewhere else,” said Murphy.

Today, Reed & Barton still make its hand-crafted silver here, but on a greatly downsized scale from its heyday. Pepsi and Perkins Paper also have plants here, and the city is home to a 160-store mall, the Silver City Galleria. But the city is nothing like the once-bustling industrial center it once was. It is plagued by crime, decaying roads and a deteriorating infrastructure.

Nunes says he enjoys seeing progress – no matter how small – in a city that has struggled for years. On weekends, he drives around with his 7-year-old daughter, Aryanna, and writes down the locations of potholes so he can point them out to his public works crews.

“I take great pride in this city,” he said. “I love being mayor.”

AP-ES-10-21-05 1632EDT