Restoration companies run by North Side-based Mistick Construction are still repairing so much damage done by last year's Florida hurricanes that they expect this year's revenue from the work to reach $7 million.

Such disasters may be grim business, but the Mistick affiliates already are fielding more in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

"We're kind of storm chasers, but when you have this kind of devastation and deaths, it can lose its luster," said Campbell, an executive with Church Restoration Group and another Mistick company, Insurance Restoration Services. "But that's why we're in business."

The Mistick companies' windfall from the Florida hurricanes is expected to be duplicated for many firms here and elsewhere as the economic ripples of rebuilding communities devastated by Katrina spread well beyond the Gulf Coast.

Published estimates of the storm's damage have ranged as high as a staggering $300 billion, including at least $40 billion in private insurance payments and billions more from federal and state treasuries. The Federal Emergency Management Agency already has been spending at a rate of $2 billion a day for goods and services ranging from rescues and meals to temporary housing and emergency construction. State spending, including contracts for infrastructure repairs, also has begun.

Even though the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated the hurricane's impact could cut the gross domestic product by as much as a full percentage point in the last half of this year, private economists have been focusing on rebuilding needs that could drive economic growth early next year.

For Mistick and some firms in the region, the boom already has begun.

Campbell, who works for the Mistick affiliates, said it was too early for companies such as his to be engaged in recovery efforts in hard-hit New Orleans, but a core of employees, mostly managers and superintendents, from the firm's church restoration unit already were at work in Mobile, Ala.

"Most of the damage in Mobile was high winds and roofs blown, shingles taken out and water getting in that way, rather than flooding," he said.

Churchill-based PDG Environmental also joined the cleanup effort in the Gulf two days after the storm hit and now has 150 employees in New Orleans and Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss.

So far, the company, which specializes in disaster restoration and remediation of environmental hazards and is still doing work related to last year's hurricanes has been focused primarily on hotel projects.

"Lodging is a huge issue and they're trying to get hotels open as quickly as possible" to accommodate workers and dislocated residents, said Shawn Regan, PDG's director of business development.

Green Tree-based L.B. Foster has received a number of orders for sheet piling, the massive steel walls used to hold back water, and hopes eventually to get business supplying rails for regional and short-line railroads that were washed away.

"I think the piling potential could be significant," said Chairman Lee B. Foster II. "The rail possibly could be meaningful."

As the immediate Gulf Coast rescue and recovery efforts give way to more construction, some other companies in the region foresee abundant opportunity to bid on work or sell supplies.

"We had people there all last week looking at emergency repairs," said Robert Luffy, chief executive of American Bridge Co.

"We build bridges and there are at least a half dozen pretty good-sized ones washed out."

The Coraopolis-based company, which also does infrastructure construction, sees plenty of need for that too, Luffy added.

"New Orleans has a heck of a lot of work, but ports along the whole Gulf Coast sustained a lot of damage," he said.

RedZone Robotics, based in Homestead, said it was working with consultants and business partners to establish contacts with government officials for any work that may require the 600-pound robots it developed to go into underground pipes to search for cracks, sediment, corrosion and other damage that typically affects sewer and water lines.

But not every opportunity in the Gulf was what it might seem at first blush.

At least one local company, for example, worried that any work it gets may simply offset lost business that it already did in the Gulf states.

Mine Safety Appliances said it was fielding business from the Gulf region for protective equipment such as respirators, eye goggles and hard hats. But Ron Herring, vice president and general manager for MSA's safety products division, said those sales wouldn't necessarily offset lost sales to retail distributors in the Gulf, such as Home Depot, that already carried them.

"The same areas that were destroyed were also customers of our so the net effect is not likely to be favorable," he said. "I'd say it's likely to be neutral at best, but we really don't know at this point."

WTW Architects, which already had contracted to design a new student union for the University of New Orleans and had been scheduled to meet with university officials the day Katrina struck, was hopeful that the estimated $30 million project would proceed and some disaster aid might even "expand the scope" said Paul Knell, a senior principal with the firm.

But much in the Gulf remains up in the air. "At this point, we can't even get in contact with them."

Although large contractors have natural contacts to approach for providing their services in the wake of a disaster, some companies no doubt find opportunities difficult to pursue without appearing insensitive.

Just as in the aftermath of 9/11, there's a fine line between appearing opportunistic and simply following the work, said Robert O'Gara, director of corporate communications at Point Park University.

He cited the sensitivity convention centers around the country, including the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, have tried to show while offering services to stranded organizations that had planned to gather in New Orleans.

Any effort regional economic developers make to pitch Gulf coast companies on the advantages of Southwestern Pennsylvania's usual immunity to hurricane damage, earthquakes and other disasters probably would take just as much tact.

Even so, public relations executive Robert Oltmanns, interviewed last week while standing in line at Allegheny Millwork & Lumber on the South Side, said it was a marketing opportunity worth pursuing, particularly among small companies whose business doesn't depend on where they're located.

"Every January and February when I groan and complain about how snowy and icy it is, I have to remind myself we have no earthquakes," he said.

The influential business-backed public policy organization, the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, has discussed the matter but has not yet formulated a plan to market the region to prospects in the hard-hit area, said spokeswoman Pam Golden.

"We're looking for natural connections and have made a few informal phone calls," she said.