Jenniece Fraise hasn't seen her home in Louisiana since Hurricane Katrina raked the region nearly a month ago and her anxiety has been compounded by images of more flooding and destruction in the wake of Hurricane Rita.

"It's hard," said the 22-year-old, one of 18 evacuees from Katrina who relocated to Hawai'i. She is staying with friends in Helemano. "It's hard not knowing. No one that I know of has been able to get back."

Fraise is among dozens of people with Hawai'i ties who have been touched by the Gulf Coast's two major hurricanes in less than a month.

The Hawai'i chapter of the American Red Cross has 29 volunteers, mostly in Louisiana, helping storm victims, said Coralie Chun Matayoshi, director of the Hawai'i chapter. All of the volunteers were already in the region helping Katrina victims and Matayoshi said more volunteers from Hawai'i would be heading to Louisiana to assist with Rita cleanup.

Three of the volunteers had to evacuate to Kansas to avoid Rita, she said.

"We held off (sending more volunteers) because of our situation with Jova," she said. "We'll redeploy more people (now)."

Hurricane Jova was on a general course toward Hawai'i last week, but weakened to a tropical storm and missed Hawai'i by about 350 miles to the east.

Former Honolulu resident Katie Leithead, who attended St. Andrew's Priory and Kalani High School in the 1970s before moving to New Orleans, evacuated with her family from their home in Lake Charles, La., on Friday. With cars packed with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Dinty Moore canned stew and family heirlooms, they crept north on the freeway for seven hours to a hotel in Natchitoches, La., normally a two-hour drive.

Leithead, who works with her husband Buzzy in his orthodontic practice, said she started packing their cars five days earlier, on Sept. 18, as Rita's approach hit the news. She rounded up important papers and family photos, took paintings off the walls and hired workers to board up the house.

"People said, 'You're crazy, you're eccentric, you're a little bit hyper, don't you think?' I say you can always put it back on the shelf if it doesn't hit."

On Saturday they stayed in Hot Springs Village, Ark., and yesterday stayed at a hotel in Shreveport, La., waiting to go home sometime this week. She said a family friend drove past their house and said it had lost some roof tiles, but apparently was spared major damage.

"Each step we have had some guardian angel say, 'Come stay here.' We have very strong faith that we'll get through this," she said.

Fraise, who lost her husband, Army Cpl. David Fraise, last year to a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, plans to head home Saturday and see what the storm left her.

Before Rita hit, friends got word to her that her home in the small town of Gretna, La., just across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, was flooded by about 6 inches of water.

Having returned to the region for the first time after Katrina came through, Fraise's friends were forced to evacuate again to avoid Rita and were unable to fully assess the damage in Gretna.

"I don't know if I can ever move back into my house. I don't know if the water is sanitary," she said. "You're kinda thinking how much more you can take."

Reach Peter Boylan at pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.