BOLIVAR — With 10 people still reported by family members as missing from Bolivar Peninsula after Hurricane Ike’s Sept. 13 landfall, county officials said the search for human remains here should resume this week.

John Simsen, the county’s emergency management coordinator, said he expected the search to resume, since county commissioners recently contracted for the search with Santana Funeral Directors in Baytown.

“If money were no object, it would’ve happened a long time ago,” Simsen said, noting the project is anticipated to cost in hundreds of thousands of dollars. The amount also depends on the length of the search, which could take two weeks if the weather cooperates, Simsen said.

A total of 19 people from Galveston County have died as a direct result of the storm, according to officials in Galveston and Chambers counties.

Bob Walcutt, director of the Laura Recovery Center in Friendswood, said the agency still lists 54 people as missing since the storm, including 29 from Galveston.

Simsen said the challenge of determining whether the search would be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and of amassing the necessary heavy machinery needed for the job has delayed the search.

Crews will use heavy machinery to lift layers of debris on the peninsula and nearby Goat Island and use cadaver dogs to complete the search. The storm’s surge damaged 5,900 structures, 3,600 of which were swept from their foundations and stilts.

The hurricane caused severe flooding and also damaged much of the upper Texas coast.

Sightseers found the latest hurricane victim Nov. 20 on Goat Island. Simsen said there are a number of areas of interest, where previous searches immediately after the storm revealed the possibility of human remains.