Overnight on Friday, women like Carmen Rebelez, 38, a convicted drug offender and Michelle Millard, 33, serving five years for counterfeit checks and money were uprooting plants and clearing flammable trees and shrubs.

Such work is designed to create a perimeter around the Witch Fire, the most dangerous of the California blazes, and keep it from spreading.

"I've been doing time my whole entire life, since I was 14," Millard said. "It's time I learned something different."

Added Rebelez: "I want to make a change in my lifestyle, so when I get out, I can do something positive. ... We made some wrong choices and we are making an effort to change."

Of about 9,000 firefighters battling the southern California flames, nearly 3,000 are inmates. The prisoners typically get two days off their sentence for each on the fire lines. About 300 are from all-women prisoner brigades.

Millard worked with a small team of women in a remote area about two hours northeast of San Diego. To get to the mountainside that needed protection, the women hiked for an hour over charred landscape and brush.

"It's backbreaking work. It's the hardest work I've ever done," said Tonya Randall Evans, a former hotel cleaner with a 5 1/2-year prison sentence for dealing cocaine. "But it's given me six months off my sentence." - DDNEWS