 A Broadford family is single-handedly swelling the ranks of female firefighters, eight women including a grandmother, a CFA volunteers in the district and Joe Hall met them. It's fair to say in the Burgess family from Broadford, fighting fires is generational. Alright let's go girls, we've got a running grass fire. There's sisters Gabrielle, Jackie, Kylie and Dionne. We're all born and bred in Broadford so this was our way of giving back. Dionne's eldest daughter Tanika has just made the senior brigade, one of her younger daughters Lani is captain of the juniors and the other Shanay is a lieutenant. I want to follow on my mum and sister's footsteps. Then there's mum and Nan Pat who operates the radios. Kiln will control the bulk tanker ETA 20 minutes. It was how communities were touched by Black Saturday that inspired the Burgess women. We thought there's actually something that we could do here for ourselves, our families and our community. The sisters belong to four different brigades in the same district, all are highly skilled. The training that we receive is just world-class, second to none. That training was put to the test in a ferocious deliberately lit fire in Kilmore in February of last year, the maternal instinct coming out in Pat's radio communications. I do remember one of them was, have you seen Jackie at these? Jackie or us? I'm like mum, it's not the, you know. It's not the time of the place. Bring me when I'm not busy. As soon as the siren goes, they're on that truck. Yes, I think now, please God, let him come home. There's a lot of things that I've seen, the other 17-year-old girls and boys that don't actually get to experience or see. Of the 43,000 CFA volunteers across the state, 12,000 are women, a 30% increase in 15 years. In district 12, where the four women work, the number of females in operational firefighting roles has tripled since the year 2000. Little wonder then that all of the women say they're treated no differently by their male colleagues. Well, in my brigade, there's no real barriers. Like I said, they treat everyone equally, and it's more of a male dominant brigade, but they just treat you like one of the boys. It was a case of whatever the blokes can do, we can do it just as well. Do you think you can do as good a job as a blokes? We probably do it better because we're girls, we look better. The Burgess clan clearly love their work. They insist on having fun honing their skills, all the while trying to recruit other female volunteers, no matter what their age. I have a six-year-old who's claiming she's going to be the next captain. What can you say? So what would you say to other women thinking of joining? Come on in. Why not? Do it. Yeah, we can do it, you can do it. Joe Hall, 9 News.