Field Mission: Enduring the Rainy Season

Please Note: These newsletters may contain written descriptions or images of the violence, disease, and injuries our teams confront on a regular basis. Please read at your own discretion.

Stronghold vehicles push through deep mud during the rainy season in Karen State, Burma. The flooded roads make medical transport slow and dangerous, but crews pressed forward to to save lives (© 2025, Stronghold Rescue and Relief).

In mid-2025, as the rainy season intensified in Burma (Myanmar), the worsening conditions made medical evacuations even more difficult. Villagers and Stronghold crews had to find new ways to move the wounded after airstrikes and clashes in Karen State left many in urgent need of care.

Torrential rains turned the mountain tracks into rivers of mud, cutting off entire communities. Ambulances often could not reach patients directly, forcing teams to hike miles through the jungle, carrying the injured by hand. In some cases, it took hours just to move a patient a short distance to where a vehicle could safely pass.

A Stronghold team and local villagers carried a wounded patient through the jungle to reach an ambulance, relying on an improvised bamboo stretcher to cross flooded paths (© 2025, Stronghold Rescue and Relief).

Despite these challenges, Stronghold teams pressed on—carrying patients over collapsed bridges and through dangerous terrain. Thanks to the determination of both the teams and the villagers, patients still reached clinics and hospitals for treatment.

This mission was possible only because of Stronghold’s supporters. Your help keeps ambulances running and supply teams equipped, even in the toughest conditions.

A wooden bridge washed out by relentless rains in Karen State, Burma. (© 2025, Stronghold Rescue and Relief)

Thank you to everyone for supporting Stronghold and making our life-saving work possible.

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