As more than 1.9 million people flee the path of Hurricane Gustav, eight volunteers from Hawai'i have joined the ranks of the first responders setting up shelters to ensure that evacuees are cared for.

Esther Lau is one of those volunteers who left on Friday for Fort Worth, Texas, where busloads of patients from nursing homes and noncritical hospital patients were being brought in. She is one of eight people from the American Red Cross-Hawai'i State Chapter.

"It's very calm as far as the weather's concerned," Lau said yesterday via cell phone. "People are evacuating, and there's quite a bit of traffic heading into Texas."

The Category 3 storm is expected to strike land tomorrow. Unlike the situation when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, residents appear to be heeding the call for evacuation, said Lau, who was a volunteer American Red Cross worker and was in the Gulf three years ago to help.

"The shelters are already full," Lau said. "We're anticipating the worst."

Yesterday afternoon Carolyn Hall, who was assigned to New Orleans, said the rain had begun to fall. Since she arrived on Saturday, she's helped more than 30,000 people find a plane, train or automobile to get out of the city where the hurricane is expected to touch down early today.

"The whole place is crawling with National Guards," Hall said. "We're getting a lot of conflicting information on the storm, but the rain is coming down steady."