Not many would give up their free time to join rescue efforts in another country, but that’s what US Marine Reuben Ebanks, a Caymanian born on the Brac, did when he saw the devastating fires that razed the Hawaiian island of Maui in August.
Having previously been deployed in Oʻahu, Hawaii, for three years, Ebanks told the Cayman Compass he knew he had to help in some way.
“When the fire happened, [the American Red Cross was] looking for volunteers,” he said, adding, “So I decided to go and help out.”
Ebanks, 52, who is from Cayman Brac and has three adult children, said he was on personal leave from the US Marine Corps, in October when the call for volunteers came in, so he left his base in Biloxi, Mississippi, and headed to Maui.
“I volunteered with the American Red Cross to go over there for three weeks to help out,” he said, adding that during his deployment in Hawaii, he had also been stationed for a time in Maui, “just right down the road from the fire”.
The wildfire, which claimed 97 lives, was declared one of the worst fires in US history.
Chief Warrant Officer Five Ebanks, who was featured in the American Red Cross Pacific Islands Region news blog for his rescue efforts, said in that article he could not “think of a better way to utilize my time than helping the Red Cross and the folks that have been impacted by the Maui fires”.
He acknowledged he was a bit apprehensive as it was his first time on the ground in a disaster in his three years as a Red Cross volunteer.
“I trained online and did all the requirements online, but it’s a big deal when you go out and are… actually doing it for real. So there was some hesitation on my part, but my Red Cross co-workers… trained me up fairly well, fairly fast and I got the hang of it pretty fast,” he said.
‘Like a war zone’
Ebanks, who has spent 26 years in the Marine Corps, said he been to Maui several times, and while he was excited to go back and help out, he was not sure what to expect.
When he landed there, Ebanks said, it was unimaginable.
“It looked like a complete war zone; I mean, just hundreds and thousands of houses destroyed, completely burnt down,” he said.
Ebanks said what he saw was complete “night and day” from what he remembered when he was stationed there with the Marine Corps.
“The recovery efforts are going to take several years to get them back to where they were, prior to the fire,” he said.
Ebanks visited homes in the impacted communities and interviewed residents as part of the financial assistance process, saying it was “heartbreaking”.
“I have friends that are from Maui and I have friends that are impacted by the disaster. It was not only good getting over there and helping out strangers that I didn’t know, but actually getting to meet up with them,” he said.
Ebanks said hearing their stories and experiencing camaraderie with his friends helped to ease the burden in some ways.
He worked with the fire victims, whom, he said, found it hard to talk about what they experienced.
“Hawaiians are pretty reserved people,” he said, so they were hesitant to discuss emotional impacts of the fire, and “it was hard to get that kind of information out of them. We had to be a little sensitive of how we talked about the fire; some of them didn’t like to talk about it.”
Ebanks added the residents appreciated everything the Red Cross and the other organisations that were there helping.
“They’re extremely grateful for what we were doing for them,” he said.
Military runs in the family
All three of his children followed their father into the military.
Ebanks is at the Meteorological and Oceanography Analyst Forecaster School on the Marine Corps Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi.
His son Mikel served five years in the US Marine Corps as an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle operator/pilot. Daughter Anastasia Ebanks-Collier has served in the United States Navy, and his youngest child, Malik, who temporarily served in the Marine Corps, will be re-enlisting in the military.
Ebanks, who has done tours in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, said he decided to join the military to contribute in the US and “earn my way” since moving there from the Brac at the age of 19.
“The brotherhood and sisterhood, the deployments, the training, the education… it’s been a blessing for me,” he said, adding that it has been a fantastic experience meeting people from all over the world.
He said he looks back at his career with a sense of pride, knowing that someone from a small island like Cayman Brac could accomplish so much in the US Marine Corps.
Ebanks, in a message aimed at young Caymanians who may be considering a military life, said the number one priority has to be doing well in school.
“I would encourage anybody that’s interested in joining either the British or American military to do it. It’s an experience that you can’t get anywhere else. It’s deployments, it’s learning a skillset for free,” he said.
And then, after retiring from the military, he said, “you’re pretty much priority for jobs. With your application form and your experience in the military… everybody wants to hire people that have served in the military.”
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