NEWARK -- In a spectacular display of firefighting capacity along a shore lined with tank farms, refineries and chemical plants, a team of firefighters on land and sea produced a flow of water on Thursday that officials said could fill seven swimming pools per minute, or, more critically, dowse an inferno triggered by a terror attack.

The display was actually a training operation by the New Jersey Urban Area Security Initiative Neptune Task Force, a consortium of more than a dozen firefighting agencies and organizations in and around the New York Harbor region.

Held at Berth 25 at Port Newark, ten fire hoses up to 12 inches in diameter shot a volume totaling 49,000 gallons of water per minute at an imaginary inferno from a distance of 500 feet.

While the event was only a drill, officials said it was meant to hone skills and test water volumes critical in fighting high-temperature fuel or chemical blazes that could occur accidentally or as a result of terror attacks along New Jersey's so-called Chemical Coast of Middlesex and Union Counties and industrial waterfronts of Hudson and Essex.

"Just like sports teams, it's critical that they practice so they can perform at a high level should an emergency situation occur in or around the port community," Aaron Sherburne, general manager of New Jersey marine terminals for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, stated in an announcement of the event. The Port Authority is a member of the Neptune task force, and provided the space for Thursday's drill.

Union County Fire Coordinator Fred Fretz, who helped coordinate Thursday's drill, said the water volume was the equivalent of 10,000 garden hoses on full blast. That kind of capacity can be critical, Fretz said, in fighting fires that are so large and so hot they could evaporate a smaller volume of water as fast as it's pumped onto the blaze.

Fretz, a retired Union Township fire chief, said the water used in the demonstration was extracted from the Arthur Kill by five separate pumps working simultaneously to feed the hoses: two belonging to the Neptune task force; one from International Matrix Tank Terminals, a facility in Bayonne; one from Ferrara Fire Apparatus, a private company that sought to take part in the record-breaking event; and one on board Fire Boat 343 of the Fire Department of New York, the only boat taking part.

In addition to the FDNY, the Port Authority, other entities belonging to the task force include the Phillips 66 Refinery, the NJ Division of Fire Safety, and fire departments from Elizabeth, Union Township, Linden, Roselle, Rahway, Milburn, Kearny and Kenilworth.

Thursday's announcement quoted the Elizabeth Fire Department as saying the event achieved a world record for combined water flow by firefighting apparatus, beating the previous high of 41,000 gallons per minute.

It is a Ferrara fire truck, the Inundator Super Pumper, that holds the record for water flow from a single pumper, at 5,492 gallons per minute, according to the Guinness World Records folks.

Some of the 10 streams of water on Thursday were died red and blue, lending a patriotic hue to the event. But it was not deliberate, Fretz said, noting that the died streams were used to indicate foam fire suppressants that would be used in cases of real emergency.

But for a veteran firefighter concerned with pumping as much water as possible onto a blaze, the display was inspiring nonetheless.

"It was a very impressive sight for all the water being discharged," Fretz said.

Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.