The storm blew out skyscraper windows, cut power to millions and swamped thousands of homes along the coast. Yachts were carried up onto roadways, buildings and homes collapsed and cars floated in floodwaters.

It appeared that Ike was not the single calamitous stroke that forecasters had feared.

But the full extent of the damage - or even a rough sense of how many people may have perished - was still unclear, in part because many roads were impassable.

State and local officials began searching for survivors by late morning, just hours after Ike roared ashore at Galveston with 110 mph winds, heavy rains and towering waves.

Overnight, emergency dispatchers received thousands of calls from frightened residents who bucked mandatory orders to leave as the storm closed in. Authorities estimated there were about 140,000 or more who stayed despite warnings they could die.

"There was a mandatory evacuation, and people didn't leave, and that is very frustrating because now, we are having to deal with everybody who did not heed the order. This is why we do it, and they had enough time to get out. It's just unfortunate that they decided to stay," said Steve LeBlanc, city manager in Galveston.

The storm, which had killed more than 80 in the Caribbean before making landfall in the United States, claimed at least two lives - one in Texas and one in Louisiana - but the toll was likely to rise.

A woman died when a tree fell on her home near Pinehurst in Texas, crushing her as she slept, and Louisiana officials say a 16-year-old boy drowned after falling out of a fishing boat in Ike-flooded Bayou Dularge.

The Coast Guard also was searching for a 19-year-old man also slipped off a jetty near Corpus Christi and apparently washed away.

The storm, nearly as big as Texas itself, blasted a 500-mile stretch of coastline in Louisiana and Texas. It breached levees, flooded roads and led more than one million people to evacuate and seek shelter inland.

President George Bush declared a major disaster in his home state of Texas and ordered immediate federal aid.

Officials were encouraged that the storm surge topped out at only 15 feet - far lower than the catastrophic 20-to-25-foot wall of water forecasters had feared, but major roads were washed out near Galveston, and the damage was still immense.