Who Is Scott Ruskan? Brave Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer Praised as 'American Hero' After Saving 165 Lives in Texas Floods
The tragedy occurred on Fourth of July weekend and led to one of the largest emergency water rescues in recent memory.
Amid the devastating floods, an unlikely hero emerged—26-year-old Petty Officer Scott Ruskan, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer on his first mission with no prior rescue experience. Based in Corpus Christi, Ruskan was among those who responded to the urgent call for help. With roads submerged and currents too strong for boats, helicopters became the only lifeline for hundreds stranded.
Ruskan was dispatched to the ground as the only triage coordinator while 12 helicopters from the Coast Guard, National Guard, and US Army hovered above the scene. He pointed out rescuers, provided first aid, and consoled flood victims—some of whom were children who, wearing pajamas, were drenched and terrified.
Ruskan is a KPMG employee (in Paramus, N.J.) and served as an accountant before he was recruited to the Coast Guard in 2021 and completed training as an Aviation Survival Technician (AST) in California. It was his first-ever rescue mission, and by the time it was done, 165 people had been saved—an incredible success that has been praised by people across the USA.
Scott Ruskan was saluted as an "American hero" and celebrated in a social media post by the state's secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, who extolled his bravery and leadership on a mission that would challenge even the most seasoned professionals. "His selfless courage is the very embodiment of the Coast Guard's motto of 'Semper Paratus' (always ready) and our mission of 'not just saving lives, but preserving the maritime domain.'"
At Camp Mystic, Ruskan had the immediate sense that the situation was bad. The site was not accessible by land, and survivors were gathering at a higher elevation among fallen trees and other wreckage. As helicopters flew in to take victims away, Ruskan directed their extrication under constant pressure and deteriorating conditions. He consoled crying children, advised panicky adults, and took desperate calls from frantic loved ones seeking information.
"It was the worst day of their lives," Ruskan said. They were freezing, wet, terrified, and looking to me for some comfort. I was trying to stay calm and focus on getting them out to safety."
Despite receiving national recognition for his courageous act, Ruskan was modest about the praise. "I'm just a guy doing my job. Any of my teammates would have done the same thing."
His modesty resounds throughout the response from a still-searching community for 11 girls and one counselor who are still missing. Five campers, all under the age of 10, were confirmed to have lost their lives, officials said. Search and rescue efforts continue throughout the Guadalupe River Valley.
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Straits Times
42 minutes ago
- Straits Times
Death toll from Texas flash floods tops 100, with scores still missing
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox KERRVILLE - The death toll from the July Fourth flash flood that ravaged a swath of central Texas Hill Country rose on Tuesday to at least 109, many of them children, as search teams pressed on through mounds of mud-encrusted debris for scores of people still missing. The bulk of fatalities and the search for additional victims were concentrated in Kerr County and the county seat of Kerrville, a town of 25,000 residents transformed into a disaster zone when torrential rains struck the region early last Friday, unleashing deadly flooding along the Guadalupe River. The bodies of 94 flood victims, more than a third of them children, have been recovered in Kerr County alone as of Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said at a late-afternoon news conference after touring the area by air. He said 161 other people were known to be missing in the flood zone. The Kerr County dead included 27 campers and counselors from Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old all-girls Christian summer retreat on the banks of the Guadalupe near the town of Hunt. The camp director also perished. Five girls and a camp counselor were still unaccounted for on Tuesday, Abbott said, along with another child not associated with the camp. As of midday, 15 other flood-related fatalities had been confirmed across a swath of Texas Hill Country known as "flash flood alley," the governor said, bringing the overall death toll from the disaster to 109. Reports from local sheriffs' and media have put the number of flood deaths outside Kerr County at 22. Hindered by continuing intermittent thunderstorms and showers, rescue teams from federal agencies, neighboring states and Mexico have joined local efforts to search for missing victims, though hopes of finding more survivors faded as time passed. The last flood victim found alive in Kerr County was on Friday. "The work is extremely treacherous, time-consuming," Lieutenant Colonel Ben Baker of the Texas Game Wardens said at a press conference. "It's dirty work. The water is still there." More than a foot of rain fell in the region in less than an hour before dawn last Friday, sending a wall of water cascading down the Guadalupe River basin that killed dozens of people and left behind mangled piles of debris, uprooted trees and vehicles. Local, state and federal emergency officials have faced days of angry questions about whether they could have warned people in flood-prone areas sooner. At an earlier news briefing on Tuesday, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha rebuffed questions about the county's emergency management operations and preparedness and declined to say who in the county was ultimately in charge of monitoring weather alerts and issuing a flood warning or evacuation orders. He said his office first started receiving emergency 911 calls between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. on Friday, several hours after the local National Weather Service station issued a flash-flood alert. "We're in the process of trying to put (together) a timeline," Leitha said. Beyond the fatalities in hardest-hit Kerr County, the death toll included seven in Travis County, seven in Kendall County, five in Burnett County, two in Williamson County and one in Tom Green County. U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, plans to visit the devastated region this week, a spokesperson said. Democrats in Washington have called for an official investigation into whether the Trump administration's job cuts at the National Weather Service affected the agency's response to the floods. REUTERS
AsiaOne
20 hours ago
- AsiaOne
Hopes fade for Texas flood victims as death toll tops 95, World News
KERRVILLE, Texas — Search teams plodded through muddy riverbanks and flew aircraft over a flood-ravaged central Texas landscape on Monday (July 7) as hopes dimmed for finding more survivors among dozens still missing from a disaster that has claimed at least 96 lives, many of them children. Three days after a torrential predawn downpour transformed the Guadalupe River into a raging, killer torrent, a Christian girls' summer camp devastated by the flash flood confirmed that 27 campers and counsellors were among those who had perished. Ten girls and a camp counsellor were still unaccounted for, officials said on Monday, as search-and-rescue personnel faced the potential of more heavy rains and thunderstorms while clawing through tons of muck-laden debris. The bulk of the death toll from Friday's flooding was concentrated in and around the riverfront Hill Country town of Kerrville, including the ill-fated grounds of Camp Mystic. By Monday afternoon, the bodies of 84 flood victims — 56 adults and 28 children — were recovered in Kerr County, most of them in the county seat of Kerrville, according to the local sheriff. As of midday Sunday, state and local officials said 12 other flood-related fatalities had been confirmed across five neighbouring south-central Texas counties, and that 41 other people were still listed as missing outside Kerr County. The New York Times, one of numerous news media outlets publishing varying death tolls on Monday, reported that at least 104 people had been killed across the entire flood zone. 'Rough week' ahead While authorities continued to hold out hope that some of the missing would turn up alive, the likelihood of finding more survivors diminished as time passed. "This will be a rough week," Mayor Joe Herring Jr said at a briefing on Monday morning. Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian girls' retreat on the banks of the Guadalupe was at the epicentre of the disaster. "Our hearts are broken alongside our families that are enduring this unimaginable tragedy," the camp said in a statement on Monday. Richard "Dick" Eastland, 70, Mystic's co-owner and director, died trying to save children at his camp from the flood, multiple media, including the Austin American-Statesman reported. He and his wife, Tweety Eastland, have owned the camp since 1974, according to its website. "If he wasn't going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way, saving the girls that he so loved and cared for," Eastland's grandson, George Eastland, wrote on Instagram. Mishap in the sky Authorities lost one of their aviation assets on Monday when a privately operated drone collided in restricted airspace over the Kerr County flood zone with a search helicopter, forcing the chopper to make an emergency landing. No injuries were reported, but the aircraft was put out of commission, according to the Kerr County Sheriff's Office. National Weather Service forecasts on Monday predicted that up to four more inches of rain could douse Texas Hill Country, with isolated areas possibly receiving as much as 10 inches (25cm). Allison Santorelli, a meteorologist with the NWS Weather Prediction Centre in College Park, Maryland, said the potential for renewed flooding was particularly heightened by the saturated condition of the soil and mounds of debris already strewn around the river channel. A flood watch was posted until 7pm local time. State emergency management officials had warned on Thursday, ahead of the July Fourth holiday, that parts of central Texas faced the possibility of flash floods based on National Weather Service forecasts. But twice as much rain as was predicted ended up falling over two branches of the Guadalupe just upstream of the fork where they converge, sending all of that water racing into the single river channel where it slices through Kerrville, City Manager Dalton Rice said. Rice said the outcome, the result of an unpredictable combination of circumstances, was unforeseen and unfolded in a matter of two hours. "Why didn't we evacuate? Well, evacuation is a delicate balance," he said in response to reporters' questions on Monday. "If you evacuate too late, you then risk putting buses, or cars, or vehicles or campers on roads into low-water areas, trying to get them out, which then can make it even more challenging." "It's very tough to make those calls, because what we also don't want to do is cry wolf." The chief meteorologist for commercial forecaster AccuWeather, Jonathan Porter, said authorities had ample time to move people to higher ground before the flood struck. Rice and other public officials, including Governor Greg Abbott, said the circumstances of the flooding, and the adequacy of weather forecasts and warning systems, would be scrutinised once the immediate situation was brought under control. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday asked a government watchdog to investigate whether budget cuts imposed by the Trump administration contributed to any delays or inaccuracy in forecasting the floods. US Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said there would be time to examine whether more could have been done to prevent the loss of life but that now was not the time for "partisan finger-pointing." [[nid:719902]]
Straits Times
a day ago
- Straits Times
Texas girls' camp confirms 27 children, counsellors died in floods as search teams face more rain
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox A search and rescue team searching for survivors along the Guadalupe River near Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas, on July 7. KERRVILLE, Texas - A Christian all-girls camp in central Texas said on July 7 that 27 campers and counselors were among those who perished in the catastrophic flooding over the July 4 weekend, while emergency responders still searching for dozens of missing people faced the prospect of more heavy rains and thunderstorms. The death toll from July 4's floods has reached 78, including 28 children, and officials have said it is likely to rise as search teams waded through mud-laden riverbanks and flew over the flood-stricken landscape. The bulk of the dead were in the riverfront Hill Country Texas town of Kerrville, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said. The Guadalupe River that runs through Kerrville was transformed by pre-dawn torrential downpours into a raging torrent in less than an hour on July 4. The waters tore through Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian girls' retreat on the banks of the Guadalupe River. 'Our hearts are broken alongside our families that are enduring this unimaginable tragedy,' the camp said in a statement on July 7. Mr Richard 'Dick' Eastland, 70, the co-owner and director of Camp Mystic, died trying to save the children at his camp during the flood, multiple media including the Austin American-Statesman reported. Eastland and his wife Tweety Eastland have owned the camp since 1974, according to the camp's website. 'If he wasn't going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way, saving the girls that he so loved and cared for,' Mr Eastland's grandson, George Eastland, wrote on Instagram. In Hill Country where the worst flooding occurred, 5cm to 10cm of more rain were expected to fall, with isolated areas getting up to 25cm of rain, said Ms Allison Santorelli, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Centre in College Park, Maryland. Ms Santorelli said that the potential new floods could be particularly dangerous because of the water-saturated soil and all the debris already in and around the river. The weather service issued a flood watch through 7pm on July 7 in the region. State emergency management officials had warned on July 3, ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, that parts of central Texas faced the possibility of heavy showers and flash floods based on National Weather Service forecasts. Confluence of disaster But twice as much rain as was predicted ended up falling over two branches of the Guadalupe just upstream of the fork where they converge, sending all of that water racing into the single river channel where it slices through Kerrville, City Manager Dalton Rice said. Mr Rice and other public officials, including Governor Greg Abbott, said the circumstances of the flooding, and the adequacy of weather forecasts and warning systems, would be scrutinised once the immediate situation was brought under control. In the meantime, search-and-rescue operations were continuing around the clock, with hundreds of emergency personnel on the ground contending with a myriad of challenges. 'It's hot, there's mud, they're moving debris, there's snakes,' Mr Freeman Martin, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told reporters on July 6. Mr Thomas Suelzar, adjutant general of the Texas Military Department, said airborne search assets included eight helicopters and a remotely piloted MQ-9 Reaper aircraft equipped with advanced sensors for surveillance and reconnaissance missions. Officials said on July 5 that more than 850 people had been rescued, some clinging to trees, after the sudden storm dumped up to 15 inches of rain across the region, about 140km north-west of San Antonio. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was activated on July 6 and was deploying resources to Texas after President Donald Trump issued a major disaster declaration, the Department of Homeland Security said. US Coast Guard helicopters and planes were aiding search and rescue efforts. First responders searches under a bridge that spans over the Guadalupe River, in Hunt, Texas, on July 6. PHOTO: EPA Scaling back federal disaster response Mr Trump said on July 6 that he would visit the disaster scene, probably on July 11. He has previously outlined plans to scale back the federal government's role in responding to natural disasters, leaving states to shoulder more of the burden themselves. Some experts questioned whether cuts to the federal workforce by the Trump administration, including to the agency that oversees the National Weather Service, led to a failure by officials to accurately predict the severity of the floods and issue appropriate warnings ahead of the storm. Mr Trump's administration has overseen thousands of job cuts from the National Weather Service's parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), leaving many weather offices understaffed, former Noaa director Rick Spinrad said. Mr Trump pushed back when asked on July 6 if federal government cuts hobbled the disaster response or left key job vacancies at the Weather Service under Mr Trump's oversight. 'That water situation, that all is, and that was really the Biden setup,' he said, referencing his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden. 'But I wouldn't blame Biden for it, either. I would just say this is a 100-year catastrophe.' Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Fox News on July 7 that there did not appear to be a specific breakdown in the National Weather Service systems. 'The alerts went out several hours in advance, but the rise in the level of water, and how quickly that happened, just really was unprecedented for this area,' she said. REUTERS
