An engineering firm hired to oversee the reconstruction of city buildings and infrastructure damaged by Hurricane Katrina has been overcharging the city, including billing for theater tickets and a flight to Las Vegas, an internal investigation found.

The report by New Orleans Inspector General E.R. Quatrevaux said the flawed contract with MWH Americas Inc. has hurt the city’s recovery, placing blame on both the company and city officials. The city’s slow rebuilding process continues to anger residents, and the uneven recovery was a major issue in the campaign leading up to last month’s mayoral election.

Quatrevaux advised scrapping the deal with the Broomfield, Colo.-based firm in the report, first made public Thursday by The Times-Picayune. The company’s work previously had not garnered much criticism.

Hurricane Katrina is one of our nation’s worst natural disasters. The loss of life and destruction seems immeasurable. Today, in the aftermath of Katrina, the focus of caregivers must be the stabilization of injury and illness and, ultimately, the preservation of life. As our nation rushes to help, by addressing the physical and safety needs of survivors, we must not overlook the myriad victims of the hidden trauma - traumatic stress.

Traumatic stress refers to the feelings, thoughts, actions and physical reactions of individuals who are exposed to, or who witness, events that overwhelm their coping and problem-solving abilities. Traumatic stress disables people, causes disease, precipitates mental disorders, leads to substance abuse, and destroys relationships and families.

Beyond those who have survived Katrina, many of whom have faced serious physical injury, are those who have experienced devastating losses of loved ones. Countless people have lost their homes, all of their possessions, and all that was familiar to them.

Katrina is responsible for approximately 1200 reported deaths, including about 1000 in Louisiana and 200 in Mississippi. Seven additional deaths occurred in southern Florida. Katrina caused catastrophic damage in southeastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi.

Storm surge along the Mississippi coast caused total destruction of many structures, with the surge damage extending several miles inland. Similar damage occurred in portions of southeastern Louisiana southeast of New Orleans.

The surge overtopped and breached levees in the New Orleans metropolitan area, resulting in the inundation of much of the city and its eastern suburbs. Wind damage from Katrina extended well inland into northern Mississippi and Alabama. The hurricane also caused wind and water damage in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. annually.

At its height, Hurricane Katrina was Category 5 storm. However, it did most of its damage after it hit land on August 29, 2005, when it was reclassified to a Category 3. Most estimates put the economic loss from Hurricane Katrina at $125 billion, with $66 billion in insured losses. Half of these losses were a result of flooding in New Orleans. University of North Texas Profession Bernard Weinstein put the loss as high as $250 billion. (Source: Swiss Re, Hurricane Katrina, January 25, 2007)

Hurricane Katrina affected 19% of U.S. oil production and caused oil prices to raise $3 a barrel. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed 113 offshore oil and gas platforms, damaged 457 oil and gas pipelines, and spilled nearly as much oil as the Exxon Valdez. (Source: About.com U.S Politics, Gustav: Look For Gas Price Increase, August 31, 2008); CNN.com Gustav Sends Oil HigherAugust 31, 2008; About.com Environment, Hurricane Gustav: How Hurricanes Threaten Offshore Drilling and the Environment)

Katrina also struck the heart of Louisiana’s sugar industry, with an estimated $500 million annual crop value, according to the American Sugar Cane League. This area of Louisiana has 50 chemical plants, which produces 25% of the nation’s chemicals. The nearby Mississippi coast was home to 12 casinos, which take in $1.3 billion annually.

Hurricane Katrina was the sixth strongest hurricane ever recorded and the third strongest hurricane ever recorded to make landfall in the U.S.

In New Orleans, the evacuation plan was particularly crucial because it is in the Storm Surge Zone, below sea level (up to six feet in some places). Its levees were only designed for a Category 3 and Katrina was forecast as a Category 4 featuring gusts topping 140 miles an hour (225 kilometers an hour).

The storm surge from Katrina was 20-feet (six meters) high.

The failure of the levees was due to system design flaws for the most part, combined with the lack of adequate maintenance. Apparently, the designers, builders and maintenance people did not devote enough time or attention to the levees in the region.

More than one million Gulf Coast residents have been displaced and many of the refugees were living below the poverty line before the storm struck.

The final death toll was at 1,836, primarily from Louisiana (1,577) and Mississippi (238). It’s very difficult to determine the exact cause of the deaths but they were all caused either directly or indirectly by the Hurricane.

An estimated 80% of New Orleans was under water, up to 20 feet deep in places.

Hurricane Katrina caused $75 billion in estimated physical damages, the most costly hurricane in history, but it is estimated that the total economic impact in Louisiana and Mississippi may exceed $150 billion.

About 90,000 square miles were affected by Katrina.

Before the hurricane, the region supported approximately one million non-farm jobs, with 600,000 of them in New Orleans, but hundreds of thousands of local residents were left unemployed by the hurricane.

More than 70 countries pledged monetary donations or other assistance. Kuwait made the largest single pledge of $500 million, but Qatar, India, China, Pakistan and Bangladesh made very large donations as well.

Katrina, one of the most powerful hurricanes in history, slammed into the coast of the South Eastern United States, washing away entire towns in Mississippi and destroying much of New Orleans.

No one knows how many people have died in this disaster, but estimates range from hundreds to even thousands, and up to one million have been left homeless.

The toxic water, which is flooding the streets of New Orleans, is a mixture of garbage, raw sewage, gasoline and other petroleum products from nearby oil refineries, thousands of corpses–of those who died in the hurricane as well as those washed out of the cemeteries, and poisonous chemicals from the many chemical plants in the region (more per square mile than in any other region in the U.S.). The effects of this will likely be felt by the people and environment of the area for years to come.

Researchers at England’s University College London have devised a computer model that uses data from midsummer winds to predict the likelihood of hurricanes striking the United States later in the season.

The model was created by sci Benfield Hazard Research Centre. The center is sponsored by Benfield, a London-based reinsurance company that is one of the world’s largest.

The new model could get a real workout right from the start. Forecasters think a ten-year trend of active hurricane seasons will continue this summer.

Folks in the communities along the U.S. Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida are getting prepared for their yearly dose of dread.

Hurricane season enters June 1, and residents of coastal areas will switch on the evening news each night wondering if there will be a small swirl off the coast of Africa that could grow a few weeks later into their worst nightmare.

This year, Gulf Coast residents may want to omit the weather report and pray instead.If a hurricane batters the region in 2010, it could slit into some communities already hanging by a thread.The massive oil polished from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig catastrophe is threatening the livelihood of shrimpers, fishermen and businesses along the hurricane-exposed coast in Louisiana and Alabama.

Major health related problems, such as water-born diseases, environmental pollution as chemicals and sewage mix in the cities and spill into the oceans are going to add to the problems.

Major oil production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico were totally damaged, leading to further a world rise in oil prices.

As massive reconstruction starts, there is also criticism of how that is happening. The British paper, the Guardian reports that “firms known for their close links with the White House are winning work.”

And of course there are many environmental issues to consider. For a long time, scientists have bothered that climate changes may spawn more fierce hurricanes. This has of course entered dissertation again in the wake of Katrina, but skeptics are quick to note that the number of hurricanes in a given season seems to be cyclical. Yet, a BBC weather reporter measured that the intensity of hurricanes seems to be increasing, even if the frequency may show cyclical patterns. The US position on climate change has of course been to resist international efforts for fear of losing economic advantages.

The tremendous destruction caused by Atlantic tropical cyclones, such as Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma, caused a substantial upsurge in interest in the subject of global warming by news media and the wider public, and concerns that global climatic change may have played a significant role in those events.

Time Magazine, for instance, published an article titled, “Is Global Warming Fueling Katrina?”-however, the article itself addressed hurricanes in general, rather than Katrina specifically, and was inconclusive

Soon after the hurricane, former Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan wrote an op-ed piece for the Globe titled, “Katrina’s Real Name“, declaring that the hurricane’s “real name is global warming.” Gelbspan went on to assert:

Though Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off south Florida, it was supercharged with an extraordinary intensity by the blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.”