10/15/2026
If you’ve driven by the new firehouse over the last week, you’ve probably seen us spraying some water. We’ve been practicing our drafting skills.
When people think of a fire engine hooking up to a water supply, they usually picture a fire hydrant on the street corner. But what happens when our crews respond to rural areas or properties without municipal water mains?
That’s when our engineers utilize a critical firefighting skill known as drafting.
Unlike hydrants that supply water under pressure, drafting requires a fire engine to pull water from a "static" source—such as a pond, stream, lake, or a portable drop tank set up by our tankers.
Drafting might look simple, but it actually takes a good bit of practice to truly master.
Instead of plugging into a pressurized hydrant, our engine pumps create a vacuum to pull water from a static source—like a pond, stream, or portable water tank. Atmospheric pressure does the heavy lifting by pushing the water up into our hoses and through the pump.
It takes precise training and airtight connections to keep a steady flow of water going to our crews on scene. No matter where an emergency happens in our township, our firefighters are trained and equipped to bring the water supply with us.
That’s your physics lesson for the week, citizens.
