Triage tags are color-coded labels used in emergency situations, like mass casualty incidents, to quickly categorize victims based on the severity of their injuries and their need for immediate care. This system helps first responders and medical personnel prioritize patients and allocate limited resources effectively.
Though the color-coded tags and specialized protocols have evolved over the years, a common breakdown of the triage tag colors looks like this:
- Red (Immediate): Indicates life-threatening injuries that require immediate medical intervention for a chance of survival. These individuals are at high risk of death without help and are prioritized for treatment.
- Yellow (Delayed): Indicates serious injuries that require medical attention but are not immediately life-threatening. Treatment can be delayed until after the red triage patients are attended to.
- Green (Minor/Walking Wounded): Indicates minor injuries that can be treated later with less urgency.
- Black or Blue (Deceased or Expectant): Indicates injuries that are not survivable with available resources. Essentially, this means hopeless—patients whose injuries are so severe that they would likely die even with treatment. They are deemed dead or expected to die.
A Bold Nurse Breaks the Rules, Changes the Outcome
In WWII, when triage tags determined the policy by which a decision was made to assist the wounded, it was up to the doctors to “color tag” the wounded, placing them in one of multiple categories according to the severity of their condition.
I read a story about a severely wounded soldier who had been brought in. One of his legs had been badly blown apart. The doctor tagged him with a black tag, indicating the case was hopeless and left him to die. But a nurse noticed he was conscious and began to talk with him. After getting to know him as a person, she couldn’t just let him die, so she broke the rules. The nurse replaced his black tag with a red tag!
The soldier was urgently transported to the hospital in the back of a truck and spent the next several months there. He not only recovered but later married the nurse who had flipped his tag to red! Even after losing a leg, the soldier was able to lead a full happy life because someone broke the rules and changed his tag. Someone declared hope over a person who had been deemed hopeless.
For over 30 years now, Breakaway’s “triage outreach” has been flipping the tags on kids coming from hard places… helping young people breakaway from hopeless labels caused by trauma, abuse, delinquency, addiction, poverty, domestic violence, the stigma of parental incarceration, and the hardest and loneliest place of all—gospel destitution.
Your partnership with Breakaway Outreach means that kids once in the “no hope” category are finding resurrected hope in the life-changing message of Jesus Christ…
- Youths in juvenile centers are hearing about the God of second chances
- Teens in foster care, recovery programs, and domestic abuse situations are encountering the Gospel
- Street kids, refugees, and lost souls are coming to faith through Breakaway sports outreaches
- Orphans and migrant children are growing in grace through our VBS and English teaching ministries
- Children of inmates are finding safe places to build resilience at our camps and retreats
Camps for Hurting Kids
We are now in our 19th year of Camp Elevate—our summer camp ministries serving children affected by parental incarceration here in East Tennessee. Nearly 2 million children in the U.S. currently have a parent in prison. Children of incarcerated parents face challenges of psychological stress (stigma and shame), academic difficulties, and a higher risk of being involved in the criminal justice system.
Prisoners’ children are six times more likely than other children to be incarcerated at some point in their lives… that is, unless someone comes along in their lives and flips the tag from black to red. And we need your support this summer to change the game for kids coming from hard places.
Our summer camps are game changers in many ways…
- Providing safe places of refuge to escape the everyday stresses of life
- Offering gospel-centered ministries to help kids encounter Christ and grow in their faith
- Cultivating community and mentoring for children that sticks with them long after summer camp
- Shaping resilience and confidence to face life’s trials with a new perspective
- Fostering pathways for discipleship growth, leadership development, and better futures
Here is a breakdown of what your “summer of hope” gift can do:
- $25 provides a Bible study booklet, supplies, and a t-shirt for a camper
- $140 provides basic lodging for a child to attend camp
- $280 gives a child the all-inclusive experience of overnight summer camp
- $880 feeds an entire boys’ or girls’ cabin for a week at Camp Elevate
Camp Elevate Expanding to South Korea
We are also very excited to announce a new partnership development with our Camp Elevate program in South Korea. When we started Camp Elevate almost two decades ago in East Tennessee, we never imagined it would go all the way to Asia. Ephesians 3:20 tells us that our God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us,” and this is what’s happening in 2026!
Next year, Breakaway Asia is launching a new summer camp, patterned after our Tennessee camp, which will serve children in Korea impacted by parental incarceration. It will feature gospel-centered and trauma-informed approaches alongside of English learning components.
The partnership will also afford opportunities for young people who have grown up in our Tennessee camp to go and serve on mission in Korea—Korean children hearing the Gospel from American young people who have walked a mile in their shoes and have since overcome the stigma of parental incarceration. That’s what we call a marriage made in heaven, or “on earth as it is in heaven.”
None of these “triage ministries” could happen without partners like you. Because of you boldly standing in the gap with us, praying and giving, black tags are being flipped to red, and kids from hard places are experiencing life-change. Thank you for your partnership in the Gospel.
Jimmy Larche
Executive Director