It was Scott Ruskan’s first mission as a US Coast Guard rescue swimmer. The 26-year-old was new to the Coast Guard. He had left a previous career as an accountant before enlisting, and had graduated from rescue swimming school around six months ago when his team got the call from Task Force 1, a local search-and-rescue team in Texas, early Friday morning.
It’s hard to overstate what these guys see. If you’ve ever experienced this magnitude of disaster, you know damned well that all the pictures and video in the world doesn’t do justice to the actual destruction and suffering on the ground.
Ex-FIL was in the Mississippi Guard. Earned 2 Bronze Stars on two (three?) tours of Iraq. Humanitarian aid, not combat, a detail relevant to the story below. He was just fine.
Came home and fought his way through Katrina on the tip of the spear. Those men chainsawed houses in half and pushed them off the road to get in. After all that he suffered PTSD, hooked up with another Guard member, left his wife of 32-years and stopped talking to his only child. He was not fine.
New Orleans got the news coverage, but the Mississippi Gulf Coast was fucking wrecked. We went to see the man in Gulfport, then headed north. The last of the damage we saw was past Hattiesburg, 80 miles of destruction. And that was going straight away, the blast radius closer to the Gulf was wide.
Some of these people are digging for corpses, some are little corpses, with their hands. Many, most?, of these people are facing serious PTSD in the near future.
Anyway, after living Ivan, I cried my eyes out over Katrina. I still tear up when I think about it, still cry thinking about what I saw the next morning. Cried when the Florida Guard rolled in to save our asses, thought I was on my own.
Taking the kids swimming in the creek now. I’m out.
Hurricanes are so devastating, I don’t think anyone really understands unless they’ve gone through it. I’ve lost a few neighbors to a few different hurricanes, because evacuation orders never seemed to keep up with the changes to direction and speed. People absolutely go feral trying to survive, and I’m not saying that I blame them, but it adds an extra layer of brutality when you are in an isolated community and it often takes a week for help to arrive. A week without safe drinking water, fears of electrocution from downed power lines, no medical aid, and the stink of rotting animals (in my case it was always fish who got stranded when the water receded), and worse.
I served in the Navy, but I’ll always remember how hard the Guard and the Coasties fought to bring comfort. Even if it’s just the comfort of knowing you can bury family and friends, that’s still a gift/sacrifice they can give us. I wish non-combat PTSD was spoken about more often, especially because people tend to avoid getting help without the combat label.
deleted by creator
I disagree.
A hundred people died. One man (technically team, I’m sure) saved that many. How many more would have died without what remaining services were in place?
It shows how valuable these invisible support staff are. Maybe, no one would have died without the cuts…
I think it puts this in contrast. And it’s also good to put in people’s heads before the next time they try to make stupid cuts
I’m all for cheering for first responders, even if the scenes they attend to reflect deeper problems. I really doubt that this news will make anyone forget about FEMA and the NWS. It’s like we’re in a sub all about positive news that provides a break from the news cycle.
deleted by creator
