BOLIVAR PENINSULA, Texas -- Crews embarked on a grim mission on the Bolivar Peninsula Thursday, searching once again for bodies in the debris left by Hurricane Ike.

A military helicopter took to the skies, and cadaver dog teams went on a house-to-house hunt.

Other searchers combed through hot spots identified by cadaver dogs in the debris.

Crystal Beach Fire Chief David Loop was disappointed that the effort came three weeks after the storm.

“I’m not real happy about it. I’ll tell you that for sure,” he said.

After the initial rescue effort by the Coast Guard, the National Guard and local agencies, the search for the missing has fallen largely on the shoulders of Crystal Beach volunteers and Galveston County.

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Bolivar Peninsula was wiped out during Hurricane Ike.

Texas Task Force One is normally involved only in rescues – not searches for bodies. Their mission ended several days after Ike made landfall.

But this week they were ordered back to help with the search for the dead after local authorities complained.

“We’ve got a large area to cover,” Loop said.

Eighty percent of Bolivar and Goat Island needs to be searched again.

Cadaver dogs have located as many as 10 different debris piles worthy of sorting through board by board and brick by brick.

The list of Bolivar missing is ever-changing, sinking as low as 100 and rising to as many as 350.

It’s still unclear what crews will find.

“I think that some of it was a little bit slow on the movement through the different agencies to get what we needed in here. It’s here now, I’m thankful for that,” Loop said.

“When we’re asked what we’ve done here to try to make the recoveries, we can honestly say we did everything,” he added.

And that means a continued effort to find the missing while the living are still coming home.

“We want people to be able to come in and try to get some kind of beginning, and we’re still trying to put closure to another part of this whole thing,” Loop said.