Coast Guard Hero Scott Ruskan Saves 165 in Texas Floods During First Rescue Mission
“Honestly, I’m mostly just a dude. I’m just doing a job… Any one of us… would have done the same thing.”
On July 4, Petty Officer Scott Ruskan began his first rescue mission with the U.S. Coast Guard. By the end of the day, the 26-year-old New Jersey native had helped save 165 people from catastrophic floodwaters in Texas. Calm under pressure and driven by duty, he became the ground force behind one of the largest airlift rescues in recent memory.
Ruskan spoke about the mission publicly during a Fox & Friends interview, where he described the conditions, the emotional toll, and the impossible choices he faced. His words—calm, humble, and clear—captured the essence of what unfolded that day.
"I was trying to be a voice of calm."
Coast Guard Petty Officer Scott Ruskan describes saving 165 people during catastrophic flooding in central Texas — all on the first mission of his career | @foxandfriends @LawrenceBJones3 pic.twitter.com/6HvSmT1yws
— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 7, 2025
Full Transcript:
“We got on scene, we were kind of battling with my crew on the six-five-five-three. We were kind of battling some pretty bad weather for maybe five to six hours before we were able to get on scene. Once we got on scene, we were boots on the ground. We made the decision to leave me there. We figured we’d be able to hoist more people out on our helicopter with me not on it, and then I’d be able to help out the scene at Camp Mystic a little bit better.
Yeah, just a lot of people looking very scary, very tired, cold, missing loved ones, probably, terrified, honestly. And I was just trying to be a voice to calm and triage these people and get them to safety as soon as we could.”
The rescue unfolded amid torrential rain that caused the river to surge 26 feet in under an hour. Camp Mystic, nestled along the banks, became a nightmare scene: roads gone, trees snapped, and nearly 200 girls and staff trapped on high ground, with helicopters as their only escape. Ruskan’s crew arrived by MH-65 chopper and quickly realized the operation required someone on the ground.
“We were like, ‘Cool, that’s where we’re going to go and get out as many people out as we can,’”
He volunteered without hesitation.
“I was like, sweet, sounds great, I’ll be more helpful on the ground than I will be in the air right now, so that’s kind of what we went with,” he said
Once on site, he found himself surrounded by fear, grief, and chaos. Children still in pajamas clung to adults. Counselors were overwhelmed. Many were injured. Many more were still missing.
“My main job was triaging, and then my second job I kind of picked up was just trying to comfort these kids and the family members and counselors,” Ruskan said.
“I mean this is like probably the worst day of their life. They’re in a terrible situation, they have friends and family unaccounted for, missing, unknown status, and they’re looking to me and all the rescuers for guidance and comfort.”
He pressed forward.
“It’s like, ‘Hey, I can’t help you guys locate these people, but I can get you guys out of here right now if we just try to remain calm.’”
Guiding helicopters and comforting survivors, Ruskan became the nerve center of the rescue. Over several hours, 165 people were airlifted to safety under his coordination.
“So we basically got the majority of the people out of Camp Mystic, which is awesome. And I feel like we did a lot of good that day, but obviously it’s still super sad,” he said. “There’s still a lot of people missing and unaccounted for, so the mission’s not over yet. It’s not over for us.
Despite the national recognition that followed, including a statement from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem praising his “selfless courage…”
United States Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer and Petty Officer Scott Ruskin, directly saved an astonishing 165 victims in the devastating flooding in central Texas.
This was the first rescue mission of his career and he was the only triage coordinator at the scene.
Scott Ruskin is…
— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) July 6, 2025
…Ruskan refused to take credit.
“Honestly, I’m mostly just a dude. I’m just doing a job… Any one of us… would have done the same thing.”
But his family, and the nation, saw something more.
“We are very proud of our nephew Scott Ruskan, helping to rescue 165 people in the Texas floods as a Coast Guard rescue swimmer. That’s Steve’s son.”
For 165 people, July 4 was the day everything could have ended, until Scott Ruskan showed up.
He stayed calm in chaos, brought people to safety, and asked for nothing in return.
“We just happened to be the crew that got the case.”
But for the families he saved, he’ll always be the reason they made it home. I know Legal Insurrection readers will join me in thanking him for his heroic service.
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Comments
The whole thing is entertainment clickbait. The misfortune of others is always a top entertainment choice.
China actually has really spectacular floods now, see youtube. A river flood doesn’t really count unless whole cities are underwater.
We realize that you enjoy playing the curmudgeon. Please save it for another subject.
The old rules, before social media, was casualties were reported, from foreign accidents “30 killed, including 4 Americans” and from domestic accidents “30 killed, including 4 children.”
There used to be columns to be filled, which was where bus plunge stories went, a couple inches each.
It’s a business and the public is the product. They sell eyeballs to advertisers. That’s still true. Non-participation in empathy orgies is the countermove.
Silence is golden. Your disinterest in the topic is your business. Making snide comments about it makes it ours.
Soap opera news is how the democrats win elections. This is soap opera news, with the right doing it instead of the left. The stupidification of the right is the concern.
The general rule is that virtue that goes public turns into the worst sort of evil. Soap opera is a forum for public virtue display.
Look at who or what is profiting from every soap opera story.
If you’re using disinterest correctly, thanks.
I’m using it correctly, although probably not the same usage you imply.
Today’s youth, owing to old Supreme Court decisions, don’t get daily Bible readings to start the day, and hence have no intuition about conjugating old-timey KJV verbs that old people find easy to detect errors in.
A similar thing happens with “disinterest” and, for example, “begs the question.” Youth is clueless about the impression they leave.
I’m 84, so I don’t think your sophistic stupidity applies. My dictionary is dated 1980, so I think it would concur.
How do you feel about “begs the question”? Or for that matter, the same observation translated historically backwards, from “The Bank Dick” (1940)
“In lieu of your heroism, your valiant, dauntless courage, I have the honor to offer you this position.”
W.C. FIelds making it an understated joke for stupidity.
You need to look up “context” and “relevance”. I already answered your irrelevant and obruse query, which is why I didn’t bother to respond to it – again.
Making snotty comments about a disaster that resulted in the deaths of so many children is despicable.
Jeselnik: you’re like a wedding photographer who only takes selfies.
Great post there my man. You compare this to the situation in China, where maybe a hundred thousand people are actually cared for by the ruling clique, only because they are key people keeping them in power. OTOH, the US cares so much about people (albeit not perfectly) that saving 165 children in a situation like this is national news, and considered something positive and good to broadcast. It matters enough that Trump is going there, just like he went to East Palestine, Ohio as a private citizen, while Biden and his ruling clique never game a damn about that town or his people.
But then, you probably support the leftists who (according to Axios) want blood on the streets to stop what they consider is a threat to the ‘democracy’ (meaning their class of people is in control like Marxists always want).
The CCP could do a lot for its people to help them not have massive floods that inundate cities, but they believe as Kant describes it so well) that you use people as means to an end as opposed using things to help people because people are ends in themselves.
Maybe you should reevaluate your position about who and what is important in life.
Dead children are a profit center.
Maybe I can explain sympathy and its purpose. If your boss says “Sorry about your father,” he’s not sorry. It’s a message to you that you can be slack on work deadlines for a while, and a message from friends that you don’t have to laugh at the same old jokes for a while, and so forth. That sympathy is given because you have a use for it. That’s limited to acquaintances, necessarily.
If you’re expressing sympathy for a distant event, you’re indulging yourself in an entertainment of yourself. The victims have no use for it and sympathy has no other point.
Once that’s noticed, you can stop that particular vice and perhaps do some actual good somewhere, if nothing else by lobbying for better news editing.
Anthony Jeselnik on thoughts and prayers given in tragedies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iWywISeII0
Somebody downvoted you. Sarcasm never works. It’s a way of saying that something’s wrong but you don’t know exactly what it is and leave it to somebody else to figure out. Women like sarcasm because they don’t know what is wrong, but a guy should analyze it.
Really
F/U
George Carlin noticed that in distant foreign tragedies, you find yourself rooting for the death toll.
It’s entertainment of yourself.
Decades ago, something called The National Safety Council reported auto death tolls. I was a very young lad when I said “mom, it almost sounds like they LIKE the deaths
Look at all the folks rising to rh’s bait.
Disagreement gives you an opportunity to restate without ceremony what has apparently been badly stated, in hopes of finding the right words. That’s how public disagreement ought to work. It’s not exactly, or merely, an entertainment.
What ends in an ad hominem is such an opportunity but without anything useful from the opposition. More a sign of cognitive dissonance, perhaps.
This appears to put the number of girls in camp at around 200 odd, rather than the 750 who were assumed to be there. Also note that the only part of the camp that flooded was the lower camp next to the river. One other point: The owner/director of the camp was killed while alerting and evacuating the lower part of the camp, which means that he had somehow been warned about the flash flood. Cell phone alert, maybe?
thanks to alllll who risk their lives so others can live
A Texas station reported on FB how one camp avoided disaster. They had about 70 adults and children there staying overnight. They watched the river. They didn’t depend on somebody else to warn them. They knew it was raining. At 1:00 am, the facilities director woke up his boss to tell him the river was rising. So they woke up everyone and got them to higher ground. And that’s how it’s done. You get up and you look at the river. (This camp was not adjacent to Camp Mystic but in the same general area.)
kudos to this young man and his colleagues–had a couple of good friends that were coastie rescue swimmers–quiet, unassuming and incredibly brave–the first ones in the water and the last ones out–they were typically flown to their rescues–knowing them and knowing some of the things they had to do/risk to save others am astounded we have a chopper in inventory powerful enough to lift their cojones off the ground
I have a significant different take on this than Jardin, but it’s still somewhat uncomplimentary.
Nothing negative about the Coastie. He’s definitely a hero and he’s definitely someone your kids should learn from.
But at the same time it seems apparent to my tinfoil hat that somebody in Washington was tasked to find a hero they could boost in order to bolster Trump’s popularity and stick it to the Democrats. Somebody made up a list of all the people who did unusually heroic things, somebody else went down the list and said, look at this kid, he’s absolutely storybook. And then they assigned him a party agent inside the beltway, and now the stories roll out.
Gads. Someone as cynical as me.
You really should come up to Wickenburg. We can share some bitter herbs.
BZ to you Petty Officer Ruskan.
I can say from experience that doing even a single person rescue is difficult, exhausting work. This rescue swimmer and his team did 165? That is mind blowing. BZ to Petty Officer Ruskin and his crew.