A home destroyed by Hurricane Ike is shown in this aerial view Monday in Crystal Beach, Texas.

Houston ? They waited nervously for the storm to arrive. They waited scared for the storm to pass. Now the thousands of victims of Hurricane Ike wait patiently for help – for food, water, ice and gasoline – along a brutalized Texas coast, where they face days and even weeks of waiting before they can go home.

Thousands streamed to supply distribution centers Monday, holding out their hands for anything that workers could offer. Many had food melting in their freezers, or had run out completely. It will be days before the power comes back on, and daily routines like grocery stores, showers and even hot meals are tough to find.

“It is what it is. I’m breathing not bleeding,” said Mark Stanfield, 58, who walked two miles to a FEMA distribution center Monday for a box of MREs, water and ice that he would have to carry back home.

Snapshots of damage were emerging everywhere: In Galveston, oil coated the water and beaches with a sheen, and residents were ordered off the beach. Dozens of burial vaults popped up out of the soggy ground, many disgorging their coffins. Several came to rest against a chain-link fence choked with garbage and trinkets left behind by mourners.

Galveston officials guessed it would be months before the island could reopen, and warned that mosquito-borne diseases could begin to spread. Cows that had escaped flooded pastures wandered around a shattered neighborhood. An elderly man was airlifted to a hospital, his body covered with hundreds of mosquito bites after his splintered home was swarmed.

“Galveston can no longer safely accommodate its population,” City Manager Steve LeBlanc said. “Quite frankly, we are reaching a health crisis for people who remain on the island.”

There were also signs of progress. Houston assistant fire chief Rick Flanagan said emergency calls dropped dramatically Monday afternoon. Houston mayor Bill White rescinded a mandate to boil water, citing tests that found no widespread contamination. White also said residents of the Clear Lake area, which was under a mandatory evacuation order, could safely return home.

In San Antonio and Austin, thousands streamed into 284 shelters set up by the state. As local officials sternly warned it wasn’t safe to come home, many wondered how long they would be there, how they would pay for meals, and what was happening to their families.

More than 1,300 people, who had spent several nights at Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center, complained that they could not get information about how to find food and clean clothes.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry urged people to be patient, calling rescue workers “heroes” who were doing their best.

“Here are the facts: You never are going to get ice and water into an area that’s been impacted like this hurricane,” Perry said after touring damaged towns. “It’s just not going to get in fast enough. I know there are a lot of frustrated people out there.”

At a shopping center in Houston, honking motorists in a line of cars stretching for more than a mile advanced quickly to the front, as if in a fast food drive-in, as some 15 Texas National Guardsmen rushed to load crates of food, ice, drinks and other non-perishable supplies into the trunks of the autos.

Search-and-rescue teams worried that the worst devastation has yet to be found.

In Texas, rescue crews were still going door-to-door in the hardest-hit neighborhoods, looking for the dead and alive, and the days after the storm were proving to be riddled with their own dangers. At least three people were found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning after using generators.

A team of 115 searchers flew into Bolivar Peninsula, the last unexplored part of the Texas coast, and feared they would find more dead. They saw homes that were splintered or completely washed away in the beachfront community.