Photo taken on Aug. 25 shows rescuers putting out fire on the frontline at Jinyun Mountain, Beibei District, southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. (Xinhua/Huang Wei)
CHONGQING, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- To extinguish a recent forest fire in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, local firefighters, residents, and volunteers were mobilized promptly. Among them, Francis Stonier soon attracted attention for his foreign face.
Stonier, a 42-year-old American teacher at Southwest University in Beibei District, won applause from Chinese netizens after his video of assembling and carrying chainsaws to support local fire rescue campaign went viral online.
The university was near the mountains which were raged by bushfires. "We were certainly aware of the forest fires and even we had smoke coming into our apartment one evening," Stonier, who lives on campus, recalled.
Upon seeing the recruitment notice for volunteers able to use fire rescue chainsaws, the American immediately signed up to support the firefighting campaign in the district.
According to Tan Chao, a member of the Chongqing Blue Sky Rescue Team, it was difficult to snuff out such a large scale of forest fire solely by water. Instead, what mattered the most was to create fire barriers to curb the spread of flames.
Fire rescue chainsaws, which can cut down trees quickly to make firebreaks, were in urgent need at that time. As most volunteers were unfamiliar with the assembling and use of such chainsaws, Stonier shared his logging expertise with the others.
Stonier came to the fire rescue frontline with some other colleagues on Aug. 23, when the maximum daytime temperature hit 43 Celsius degrees in the district. Stonier and his team members spared no effort and rushed to help assemble about 50 chainsaws that day, greatly alleviating the tool shortage in firefighting.
For safety reasons, rescue staff advised Stonier and his translator to return to the foot of the mountain instead of using the chainsaws themselves.
"Though I felt pity in my heart, it's imperative to follow the overall arrangement," said Stonier, adding that he felt so proud when seeing the chainsaws assembled by his team were carried by firefighters to combat the wildfires.
Stonier's participation in the battle against forest fires was hailed by local residents, some of whom recorded video footage of his move and posted them on social media platforms.
The heart-warming videos soon garnered over 1 million "likes." One user of Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, commented under one of Stonier's clips, saying that "The heroic move is beyond frontiers. Pay respect to all people that braved the wildfire."
Stonier first visited China for academic purposes for several months in 2008. The American teacher soon fell in love with a Chinese woman, who is now his wife.
Since then, Stonier has been dedicated to all kinds of volunteer work in China. He has donated money and offered free classes to children in rural areas, organized public training courses for many teachers in Chongqing, and attended multiple government volunteer activities.
Stonier was deeply touched by the cohesion and coordination of the Chinese people during his recent participation in the fire rescue.
He also believes that many other foreigners would also like to reach out with their helping hands to the megacity, just as he had done.
"I would like to take the lead to be a volunteer for any emergency in Chongqing in the future," Stonier added.
Caused by continuous heatwaves, the forest fires in Chongqing have been brought under control recently. ■