They’re making a big Hollywood movie in town these days, and disrupting our disrupted lives. They close lanes on the bridge over the river some days and other days, take over the ferry which runs from the foot of Canal Street to Algiers. Lots of big explosives and plenty of extras hired. The word is that this is a sci-fi movie starring Denzel Washington in which he has this “second sight,” hence the name Deja vu, which alerts him to the work of terrorists before it occurs so he can stop it. Oh, that it worked that way.

Every day we relive our Katrina story all over again, even while trying to move into the future.

A typical day’s headline stories will describe efforts to save our eroding wetlands, the deal-making over the towing of the thousands of flood-ruined cars in New Orleans, and Katrina-affected politics. Lots of politics. In Kenner, Saturday, voters put Mayor Phil Capitano in a run-off against former councilmember Ed Muniz, the mayor with 30% and Muniz with 33%. Retiring Police Chief Nick Congemi was an also-ran at 27%.

In New Orleans, each of the 23 candidates for April 22’s mayoral election is still trying to break out of the pack.

Columnist Stephanie Grace writes Sunday that originally Mayor Nagin was a shoo-in for reelection. Then Katrina gave him more challenges than he knew what to do about and scattered the electorate across America and suddenly he looked vulnerable. Campaign funders went looking for alternatives and honed in on Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and Audubon Nature Institute’s CEO Ron Forman. What they did not count on was both men running. Meanwhile, she says, no one paid any attention to two lesser knowns, Rob Couhig and Virginia Boulet.

So, in the mayoral debates, while the front-runners were boring us with their platitudes, so afraid to slip up that they refrained from saying anything, Couhig and Boulet did something unusual: they told us what they thought. “They’ve done it by talking about policy, sharply questioning their opponents and, most of all, airing their personal frustrations.” Good for them. And in the long run, good for all of us. Maybe they will start a trend.

Saturday saw a big march across the Crescent City Connection, the double bridge over the river into Algiers and Gretna, led by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, a couple of Reverends always in search of a cause. They called this a reminder of the September 1 incident when Gretna police turned away New Orleanians fleeing the flooding of their city. Since they were walking, they decided to protest the April 22 election which, they say, strips evacuated citizens of their voting rights. The courts and respected leaders have pointed out that while this election may not be perfect, it’s fair and legal and the right thing to do. Those scattered throughout Louisiana will have branch election sites, and those outside have received invitations to vote absentee. Secretary of State Al Ater says Jackson and others want him to set up voting sites in Houston, Memphis, and Atlanta, but he accurately points out that the laws governing Louisiana do not necessary apply in those other states. If someone votes fraudulently, will the Tennessee cops arrest him for violating Louisiana law?

Citizen Bill Davis writes in a Sunday letter, “My constitutional rights will be violated if people who have lived elsewhere for eight months are allowed to vote in the upcoming elections.” He says, “The vast majority of the remaining evacuees will not be coming back anytime soon…. It is unfair for us to be governed by people elected by those who are no longer residents of our city.”

On another subject, Jarvis DeBerry writes in his op-ed column, “Skyrocketing cost of insurance could cripple recovery.” That’s been my thought all along, that regardless what our politicians say, if a homeowner cannot get insurance or can’t afford it, his rebuilding ends right there on the spot.

In Saturday’s paper, someone pointed out a new thought for me. With, say, 100,000 homes in New Orleans lying unoccupied and spoiled, who’s going to cut the grass in the yards? The growing season is well upon us, which in New Orleans means lawns will require mowing almost weekly. With tall grass comes all kinds of vermin. One more headache which we do not need.

I wrote here Saturday evening that the Final Four basketball playoffs were a welcome respite for our citizens. Well, hardly. We watched as Florida demolished upstart George Mason University in the late afternoon, and then had the privilege of watching UCLA hand LSU its head in the evening contest. Neither game was even close. Sunday morning in a 30 minute local news broadcast, not one word was uttered about the LSU loss. I suppose it hurts too bad. The LSU women are in their own Final Four, with their game Sunday night. Go, Lady Tigers.

Sunday morning at Oak Park Baptist Church in Algiers, a large team of volunteers from the First Baptist Church of Spartanburg, SC, was on hand. With special guest speaker (and member of Oak Park) Col. Patricia Prechter of the National Guard to speak of her experiences in the Superdome during the Katrina event, a large group of her friends and people from the community came, making it the largest crowd in that sanctuary since the hurricane scattered the congregation.

If one likes titles, Pat Prechter is to be envied. She is Colonel, Dean, Doctor, and a lot of other things. According to Lt. Col. Marie McGregor, she is the first and only “full bird colonel” in the Medical Detachment of the La. National Guard. Academic Dean Judith Miranti of Holy Cross College, where Prechter is Dean of the Nursing School, said, “I make no claims about Pat being a steel magnolia. But it is her faith that has made her service so special.”

“The story of the Superdome,” said Col. Patrica Prechter, “is a human tragedy that surpasses anything I have ever seen.” She said, “I saw human suffering, human desperation, and human behavior–all of them so hard to cope with.” Jesus Christ gave her the strength. “Faith is knowing God is real and God is good. The One who made it all will not leave it all. He is faithful even when I am not.” She said, “It was not my strength that got me through it. It was His faithfulness.”

Friday, August 26, Prechter was activated. She would take 71 medical personnel to the Superdome and take care of evacuated patients.

Saturday, August 27 (while the McKeevers and thousands like us were filling the highways, headed for higher ground), Prechter and her team set up their equipment. The hurricane was taking dead aim at New Orleans, but there was no reason to expect it to be anything unusual.

Sunday, August 28, she reported to the Dome at 8 am, she and her colleagues deciding wisely to drive their own cars, rather than leave them at the soon-to-be-flooded Jackson Barracks. People were already arriving for shelter. “Our mission,” she said, “was to take care of the 300 special needs patients expected to come in.” Evacuees streamed in all day long. Since they had to be processed, lines reached for blocks down the streets in every direction. “Although I did not see this, many waited for hours to enter.” Many came with no supplies and no medicines.

All day, they kept coming. Some were on oxygen, and some needed dialysis. “We were not prepared for this.” “Then we were told, ‘Send 45 to 60 of your most critical patients to Tulane Hospital. FEMA will have doctors there. Send along 2 nurses and 2 medics.” FEMA never showed. On Thursday, everyone of them had to be rescued from a flooded Tulane Hospital.

Monday, August 29, the day of the hurricane. People kept arriving. Children were crying, just wanting to go home. Thousands were in the Dome, in every seat, every aisle. “We were told, ‘There is a hospital unit set up on Interstate 10 in Metairie. Send patients there.’ My heart broke later when I found out there was no hospital unit there. Just bedlam, chaos, misery, and we had sent patients there.”

“People came to help us but didn’t stay. FEMA set up a hospital unit in the New Orleans Arena (next door to the Superdome). But they left. They said they couldn’t get their stuff wet.”

“We lost power on Monday. No more air conditioning and no more sanitation. At one point, we heard that many of the wheelchair bound patients were going to be evacuated. These were old people, and either had to be in their chairs or lying down. We took them to the evacuation point and waited and waited. It was only a rumor. When we went back to their room, people had stolen all their bedding. So we couldn’t even lay them down.”

“At night, we slept in our cars, just for some peace and quiet. It was so hot.”

Tuesday, August 30, the city was flooding. “We had thought it was over, that we’d we going home soon. Then the floodwaters started coming in. And yet, more people kept arriving at the Dome. They never stopped coming. We ended up with 20 or 30,000 in the Superdome, and 1500 critically ill patients. That day, we moved the patients to the Arena.” Like the Dome, the Arena had no facilities, no power, and no communication. What it did have was a solid roof and dry indoors.

“We lost 6 or 8 patients,” Patricia Prechter said. “The media exaggerated the number of deaths.”

Wednesday, August 31, the trails of people coming continued. They waded through waist-deep water, sometimes pushing a loved one in a wheelchair or on a bike. To get from one place to another in the Dome, Prechter had to make her way through the crowds of humanity in a golf cart. “The whole crowd needed medical help, too,” she said. “They would be pleading with you, and crying. I found that I had to keep my focus on what I was doing or I’d not be able to help anyone.” This, she said, was a little reminder how important it is for believers to stay focused on the Lord Jesus Christ and not get distracted.

Thursday, September 1, “Showdown at the Dome.” “Something happened, I was never really sure. I think it was a security problem. They turned the Dome over to the military and all the other security people left. The MPs kept order.” By now, the soldiers were beginning to have medical problems of their own. “The desperation of the people in the Dome was beyond description.”

Then, finally, on Thursday, the evacuation from the Dome began. They were in lines for hours, waiting to leave. “I told the medics not to start any more IVs, that we don’t have enough supplies as it is. ‘They’re going to have to go the way they are.’ All day, into the night, they left. Many of these patients we had gotten to know, and we were so relieved they were leaving. They would ask, ‘Where are we going?’ We would say, ‘Someplace better.'”

The evacuation continued Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. By Sunday evening, all the patients were gone. Prechter showed slides of the kind of devastation humans can produce in such situations. Trash, brokenness, ugliness. Piles of discarded clothing and bedding and garbage on the parking lots, inside the Dome, everywhere.

“I did not want this day to be about me,” said Colonel Doctor Dean Patricia Prechter. Then she answered a question which family and friends have posed to her ever since that day in 1978 when she joined the Army National Guard. “One reason He put me in the Guard was to go to the Dome. That’s how tough a mission it was.”

At the beginning of her program, Col. Prechter had flashed on the screen the words, “God is in Control.” That is an amazing assertion from one who saw misery and chaos, suffering and devastation in every direction for days and nights on end. Yet, God was there. Where exactly was He, one might ask. My own answer is: in the person of people like Patricia Prechter.

Interspersed throughout Col. Prechter’s presentation and thrown onto the screen were Scriptures such as Philippians 4 (“I know how to abound and how to be abased…I can do all things through Christ….”) and Isaiah 40 (“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength”).

Associate Pastor Joseph Kay said at the conclusion, “This sanctuary has stood here many years. It has hosted some of the great preachers in the land. But no finer sermon has been preached in this place than the one we heard this morning.”

In the benediction, I reminded the congregation of something Billy Graham said at the Arena a few days ago. “Jesus Christ is no security from the storm. But He is a perfect security in the storm.”

Col. Prechter gets the last word here. “History never looks like history when you’re going through it. Only later do you realize what a crucial time you have lived in.”

We will be reliving it the rest of our lives. Deja vu.