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Rescuers flew into a hard-to-reach area of the swamped Gulf Coast on Monday and uncovered a landscape devastated by hurricane Ike.

It was the first time anyone has had a look at Bolivar Peninusla, a storm-damaged barrier island just east of hard-hit Galveston.

What rescuers found were entire subdivisions swamped by Saturday's devastating storm.

Homes were splintered or completely washed away in the beachfront community that is home to about 30,000 people in the peak summer season.

It is still unclear if Ike killed anyone on the island, since authorities still don't know how many people may have tried to ride out the storm.

But emergency crews said they feared they would find more victims than survivors.

“They had a lot of devastation over there,” task force leader Chuck Jones said. “It took a direct hit.”

Of particular concern is a resident who collects exotic animals who is now holed up in a Baptist church with his pet lion. “We're not going in there,” Mr. Jones said. “We know where he [the lion] is on the food chain.”

Two days after Ike battered Houston and forced thousands into emergency shelters, the death toll rose to 32 in nine states, many of them far to the north of the Gulf Coast as the storm slogged across the U.S. Midwest, leaving a trail of flooding and destruction.

Houston, littered with glass from skyscrapers, was placed under a weeklong curfew and millions of people in the storm's path remained in the dark.

In Galveston, city officials warned people to stay away from beaches because oil appeared to be floating on the water.

Rescuers said they had saved nearly 2,000 people from waterlogged streets and splintered houses by Sunday afternoon. Many had ignored evacuation orders. Now they are boarding buses for indefinite stays at shelters in San Antonio and Austin.

Brian Smith, public information officer from the Urban Search and Rescue Division of the Texas Engineering Extension Service, said that search and rescue missions continued across the affected area, although no air rescues had been needed since Sunday morning.

In hard-hit towns like Orange, Bridge City and Galveston, authorities searched door-to-door into the night Sunday, hoping to reach an untold number of people still in their homes, many without power or supplies.

A line of at least 30 cars formed early Monday at a strip mall in Orange, a Texas town on the Louisiana state line east of Beaumont, a day after food and water were distributed there by the National Guard. But the line dispersed after state troopers told the gathering that supplies would be passed out elsewhere.

In Houston, tensions were rising among more than 1,000 people who have spent several nights at the George R. Brown Convention Center because most of the city is still without power. They complained that they couldn't get information about how to get food and clean clothes.

The city's mayor said only 1,300 people were inside, but those sleeping on cots said it felt like thousands.

Even for those who still have a home to go to, Ike's 175-kilometre-an-hour winds and battering waves left thousands in coastal areas without electricity, gas and basic communications – and officials estimated it may not be restored for a month.

“We want our citizens to stay where they are,” said Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas. “Do not come back to Galveston. You cannot live here at this time.”

Michael Geml has braved other storms in his bayfront neighbourhood in Galveston, where he's lived for 25 years, though none quite like Ike.

The 51-year-old stayed in the third-storey Jacuzzi of a neighbour's house, directly on the bay, with family pets as waves crashed across the landscape.

“I'll never stay again,” Mr. Geml said. “I don't care what the weatherman says – a Category 1, a Category 2. I thought I was going to die.”

Kathi and Paul Norton huddled inside their house in Crystal Beach until it collapsed and was swept away. Their flag pole kept the house from collapsing on top of them, buying them a few seconds to escape, holding onto the staircase.

“You never know what a hurricane is like until you ride it on a staircase,” said Kathi Norton, 47. As she spoke outside the giant, warehouse-like shelter on a former Air Force base in San Antonio, busloads of new evacuees were arriving, bumper to bumper.

The hurricane also battered the heart of the U.S. oil industry as Ike destroyed at least 10 production platforms, officials said. Details about the size and production capacity of the destroyed platforms were not immediately available, but the damage was to only a fraction of the 3,800 platforms in the Gulf.

It was too soon to know how seriously it would affect oil and gas prices.

U.S. President George W. Bush made plans to visit the area on Tuesday.

He said getting power restored is an extremely high priority and urged power companies to “please recruit out-of-state people to come and help you do this.”

Ike was downgraded to a tropical depression as it moved north. Roads were closed in Kentucky because of high winds. As far north as Chicago, dozens of people in a suburb had to be evacuated by boat. Two million people were without power in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Of the 32 dead, five were in the hard-hit barrier island city of Galveston, including one body found in a vehicle submerged in floodwater at the airport. There were two other deaths in Texas and six in Louisiana, including a 16-year-old boy trapped in rising floodwaters. Several were farther inland.

Two golfers died when a tree fell on them in Tennessee. There were six deaths in Indiana; three died in Missouri. One person died in Arkansas and three in Ohio, including two motorcyclists killed when a tree toppled on them at a state park.

Ike killed more than 80 in the Caribbean before reaching the U.S.

Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, was reduced to near-paralysis in some places. But power was on in downtown office towers Sunday afternoon, and Texas Medical Center, the world's largest medical complex, was unscathed and remained open. Both places have underground power lines.

Its two airports — including George Bush Intercontinental, one of the busiest in the United States — were set to reopen Monday with limited service. But schools were closed until further notice, and the business district was shuttered.

Five people were arrested at a pawn shop north of Houston and charged with burglary in what Harris County Sheriff's spokesman Capt. John Martin described as looting, but there was no widespread spike in crime.

Authorities said Sunday afternoon that 1,984 people had been rescued, including 394 by air. Besides people literally plucked to safety, that figure includes people met by crews as they waded through floodwaters trying to find dry ground.

Still others chose to remain in their homes along the Texas coast even after the danger of the storm had passed. There was no immediate count Sunday of how many people remained in their homes, or how many were in danger. The Red Cross reported 42,000 people were at state and Red Cross shelters Saturday night.

The search-and-rescue effort included more than 50 helicopters, and 1,500 searchers and teams from federal, state and local agencies.

From the city of Orange alone, near the Louisiana line, more than 700 people sought dry ground — “a Herculean effort to organize a reverse evacuation that nobody had ever planned for,” Mayor Brown Claybar said.

Rescue crews vowed to continue the search until they had knocked on every door. They were helped by receding floodwaters, but there were constant surprises as people rowed and sloshed through towns.

The storm also took a toll in Louisiana, where hundreds of homes were flooded and power outages worsened as the state struggles to recover from Hurricane Gustav, which struck over Labour Day.

In Hackberry, La., about 24 kilometres from the coast, workers moved a large shrimp boat out of the highway with a bulldozer, but the team had to stop because of strong currents in the floodwaters and difficulty in seeing the roadway.

Thayne Culbertson, a disabled veteran and commercial fisherman, rode out the storm at a friend's apartment in Galveston. As someone who has been through several hurricanes, he decided to stay behind for Ike in case he could help.

Instead, help had to find him. He was picked up by a helicopter after a toppled utility pole battered the building and windows were blown out. He later boarded a bus to San Antonio.

During the storm, he said, “the sand felt like it was peeling away your skin.”