bucket brigade

American  

noun

1. a line of persons formed to extinguish a fire by passing on buckets of water quickly from a distant source.

2. any group of persons who cooperate to help cope with an emergency.

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Etymology

Origin of bucket brigade

First recorded in 1910–15

Example Sentences

It was like a fire bucket brigade, with workers passing the melons down the line to be placed into large boxes on a flatbed, a process the owner called “pitching.”

From Los Angeles Times

“It was like a bucket brigade: a truck on one side, a truck on the other,” he said.

From Los Angeles Times

Data from high-tech motion sensors will monitor horses, and an old-fashioned “bucket brigade” as well as state-of-the-art equipment will be dispatched frequently to pick rocks from the racetrack that authorities determined could have played a part in last year’s cluster of deaths.

From New York Times

Everyone on board the Araon pitched in, forming a bucket brigade to move more than 100 ice core boxes to the ship freezer.

From Science Magazine

These groups act like a molecular bucket brigade to grab positively charged potassium ions and quickly pass them to the next tethered sulfonate in line, helping the ions zip through the membrane virtually unimpeded.

From Science Magazine