Bucket brigade

German citizens practice the use of a bucket brigade, in Berlin, in September 1939.

The bucket brigade is the term for a labor intensive firefighting technique employed when sophisticated firefighting equipment is unavailable.

The technique requires individuals fighting the fire to form a line from a source of water to the fire. The individual beside the source of water fills a bucket with water, and passes it to the individual next to him or her, where it is subsequently passed all the way down the line to the individual next to the fire. The individual next to the fire then throws the water on the fire.

If there are enough people a second line may be devoted to passing the empty buckets back to the individual next to the source of water.

According to Herbert Jenness, author of a book on the history of firefighting in the United States, in early America, through the “well-directed work of one cool-headed man with a single pail of water,” a fire could be extinguished before it got a chance to be established. Fire-prone areas would have a full bucket of water hanging in a convenient location, so a cool-headed person could throw promptly throw that first bucket of water, when they first discovered a fire. If that first bucket was insufficient nearby volunteers could bring the buckets hanging near their work, to start that bucket brigade.