About The Tracks
The tracks used at Drill Team events are usually built and maintained by individual fire departments, but are designed to strict specifications that are dictated by an overseeing officiating body, which guarantees that there will be exact consistencies from track to track. As a racing season (from June till early September) begins, a schedule will be made up wherein various different fire departments will host the races that will make up that season, usually one each weekend.
A typical track is roughly 1/4-mile long. At one end is a staging area, where each of the teams will stage until it is their turn to run the event. As one progresses down the track, there are different starting lines marked out at different distances necessitated by each different event. At a specific distance down the track, on the right-hand side, is a hydrant that during events which require water is maintained at a very specific hydrant pressure, which is usually accomplished by using either a pumphouse or Class-A pumper assigned to that task. At the far end of the track is an arch, usually constructed of wood, steel or brick, that is used for the ladder and bucket-brigade events, and which is also constructed and maintained to very specific standards of the association.
Read more about this topic: Firematic Racing
Famous quotes containing the word tracks:
“Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.”
—Walter Bagehot (18261877)