The Missing 300

Where are they?:

More than 300 people are missing since Hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast last month, and the obstacles to finding them are frustrating family and friends who desperately want to know if their loved ones are dead or alive.

These family and friends want answers: Why are so many still missing? Why has the first organized search for bodies, to be held Thursday on the battered Bolivar Peninsula, taken so long?

...The frustration about the post-Ike recovery runs deep for Robin Huber, pastor of a church that was destroyed along with her home in Gilchrist. Huber estimates only seven homes are still standing in Gilchrist, which is surrounded by huge piles of debris.

Cars and dead animals float in the bay, she said.

The amount of debris is unfathomable, Huber said, and it was hurled with such force that residents can barely dig through it.

"Imagine that all of these homes were picked up and dropped from a high airplane," she said. "It looks like a bomb exploded here and the pieces are so stuck in the earth, it's impossible to pull out. Who knows what is in there."

Cars and trucks litter the road leading to the highway as if they were trying to escape at the last moment, Huber said.

When she was allowed back to Gilchrist after the storm, Huber swore she saw a body leaning out of a submerged car.

"Nobody could get to them, because they were still under water and because of all of the alligators in the area," she said.

Huber, like others, wants to know why officials haven't been searching for bodies.

"When there's a disaster, everyone focuses on it for a week, then everyone forgets," Huber said. "That's the problem right now. Why are there not more people out there looking for bodies?"

"I have people saying to me 'Do you know where my daddy is?' " she said. "All I can say is 'don't give up,' but now we are going on three weeks."