The team deployed around 7 a.m. Friday from Corpus Christi, about 200 miles south of where the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, Texas, had risen from about 3 feet to nearly 30 feet. Floodwaters in the area had swept through and battered several youth camps on the river banks — including Camp Mystic, the summer camp where they were headed.

On his first mission Scott Ruskan dropped into a biblical flood with nothing but a harness, grit, and the kind of calm resolve that makes you believe some men were born to drag others out of hell.