Female firefighters keep village safe while men are away

"We need them to keep our village safe because there are so many wooden houses here."

Chen said: "As a Party member, it's my duty to volunteer, not only to serve the villagers, but to keep my family and me safe, too. It is worth doing, even though there's no salary."

At night, the squad joins village officers and forest rangers to teach fire prevention.

In March, members of the team found firewood piled 2 meters from a house, which posed a serious fire hazard.

They immediately told a villager to move the wood. "I became aware of the threat of a fire breaking out after they told me, so I moved the wood 30 meters away from my house," said Liu Yunqi, the villager in question.

After months of effort, fire hazards have been eliminated and the village has changed greatly. It looks tidy and clean, with no disorderly piles of firewood lying around.

Nearly every household has made sure their electric wiring is properly insulated, a pond with water for fighting fires has been dug in the village, and every family has been given a fire extinguisher.

Liu said that she and her teammates will continue to work on making the brigade better to raise village safety.