Houston  - More than 1,000 rescue personnel Monday intensified their feverish search for survivors and dead bodies in Texas after the death toll rose to 30 from Hurricane Ike.

Televised images showed the barrier island community of Bolivar, next door to Galveston, nearly wiped out, with only cement slabs or free-standing stilts remaining from one-time homes. An estimated 80 per cent of the town was washed away, CNN reported.

Even before hitting the Texas coast early Saturday, Ike had claimed 72 lives on Haiti and seven lives on Cuba. The 30 victims in the US were spread across the eight states where Ike roared with fury and heavy rains as it moved northwards.

The largest rescue operation in the history of Texas sought to find 140,000 people who refused to leave the flooded coastal areas of the state despite the mandatory evacuation orders. Many were isolated by flood water or destroyed bridges.

Some 2,000 had already been rescued by Monday, hundreds of them in Coast Guard and Army helicopters, reports said. After more than two days of exposure, one man on Galveston had suffered 1,000 mosquito bites and was evacuated for medical treatment, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Galveston Island city officials joined Texas authorities in warning evacuees against returning home, to a place where there is no water, food, fuel or electricity.

They were also encouraging hold-outs to leave.

"There is nothing to come here for right now," said Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas. "Please leave. I am asking people to leave."

US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff feared that the number of dead could continue to rise in the coming days as rescue workers sifted through debris. Rescue efforts in flooded areas could yet deliver unpleasant surprises, he warned.

Texas Governor Rick Perry countered criticism that aid took too long to reach devastated areas including regional metropolis Houston.

"None of these operations are perfect. There are always ways to do it better," Perry was quoted as saying by The Houston Chronicle.

He noted that the state had escaped the worst-case scenario, and that the oil and gas industry that is key to both the local and national economy appeared to have suffered only slight damage.

US President George W Bush, a former governor of Texas, was planning to visit the region Tuesday.

In and around Galveston, the barrier island that was hit particularly hard by Ike, rescue teams were going from house to house looking for survivors.

Eventually, engineers will likely move through the hard-hit areas to determine whether homes are still habitable or must be destroyed because of structural deficiencies.

In many places, the authorities closed off roads to regular traffic in order to keep them free for rescue teams. The absence of power, fuel and drinking water continued to make much of the area unfit to live in Monday.

Governor Perry told residents of Galveston to "stay away," and noted that they might not be able to return to their homes for weeks.

Although the situation on the streets was generally calm, police chief Harold Hurtt said about 30 people were arrested for looting.

Houston's international airport re-opened on Monday.

Ike made landfall early Saturday with winds topping 170 kilometres an hour and a storm surge that pushed water up to 2 metres deep into the streets of Galveston and parts of Houston, where 4 million people live 60 kilometres inland.

The diameter of the storm, which at its peak covered much of the upper Gulf of Mexico, was blamed for the unusually high and far- reaching surge of seawater, which affected coastal communities as far off as Louisiana and Mississippi.

By Sunday afternoon Ike weakened to a tropical depression with winds of 25 kilometres per hour.

In neighbouring Louisiana the authorities were also inspecting the damage caused by Ike.

However, heavy rain associated with the storm continued to affect Arkansas, Missouri and Indiana. Evacuations were carried out in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, while numerous roads were closed to traffic in Kentucky. (dpa)