A flight against time in Texas

"My strongest impression is the resilience of a community," says US Coast Guard Petty Officer 3rd Class Seth Reeves, speaking several nearly six months after the terrible Texas floods that claimed lives in Texas Hill Country. The floods were immense, showing the frightening power of nature.

In the case of Kerrville, heavy rainfall in the early hours of 4 July 2025 transformed the normally lazy Guadalupe River into a rushing onslaught in less than an hour, bursting its banks and catching riverside communities by surprise. With daylight, it became clear evacuations had to be made from the air. Fast-moving water had stranded vehicles and cut off roads and bridges. Launching into the rain and wind, aerial units from multiple government agencies airlifted people trapped by the waters. Among these was a US Coast Guard MH-65 helicopter stationed at Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas. Its team of four responded to the call that saved 15 young campers at Camp Mystic and triaged 169 others that day.

Go/no-go decisions

Just getting on scene required extraordinary measures. Aircraft commander Lt. Ian Hopper, co-pilot Lt. Blair Ogujiofor, rescue swimmer Petty Officer 3rd Class Scott Ruskan and flight mechanic Seth Reeves met extreme weather at Kerrville which forced them into a holding pattern for 45 minutes before they finally diverted to another airfield to refuel and regroup. During another attempt, "I was on the sticks, Blair Ogujiofor had comms and obstacles, Scott Ruskan had his weather radar up (so neither Blair nor I had to look down), and Seth Reeves had up Google maps (we decided to attempt to 'drive' to Camp Mystic…)," says Hopper. Inclement weather again drove them to divert and wait out the worst of the storm.

At this point, the MH-65 team was assigned to work the Camp Mystic area with other aircraft, including an Army helicopter. Hopper recounts the conditions as they flew in formation to the camp, describing it as the "sketchiest leg, go/no-go decisions every 2 minutes, hill by hill… we had to go slower to avoid going IIMC [inadvertent instrument meteorological conditions] again (about 45-50 knots)… Due to the fact that we had just refueled and the altitude was higher than Corpus (not to mention it was humid and hot), we were pulling in the 90% torque at times to get over the hills but stay under the clouds. Once we arrived on scene at the camp ground, we began to get TCAS hit after TCAS hit [aircraft traffic avoidance signals]."

Triage and tempest

Around 12 helicopters large and small were in the area, so Hopper decided to land at a small airstrip to the north. Here, he burned down fuel so the MH-65 could hover out of ground effect (HOGE) for the rescues. "We were flying to a completely new area in completely new terrain with plenty of towers on top of hills and a fairly low cloud layer," says Hopper. "The landing zones were entirely new and… required HOGE power to get in and out of. TCAS was going off constantly and the communications were going nuts… Seth Reeves expertly managed the cabin and ensured they [the campers] were all in the safest places possible even though we did not have enough restraints for all of them."

Ruskan elected to stay behind with the young campers so that he, as the lead first responder on scene, could coordinate the loading of survivors into other helicopters. Hopper picked out a different landing zone, one where the ground was too soft for larger aircraft to land; here he loaded three more groups of campers over the course of 3.5 hours, before returning for Ruskan and completing a total of 7.5 hours of flight time. For their extraordinary actions, Hopper and Ruskan were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Ogujiofor and Reeves were honoured with the Air Medal.