1. What sysadmins have to do to correct sudden operational problems.
An opposite of hacking. Been hacking your new newsreader?
No, a power glitch hosed the network and I spent the whole afternoon
fighting fires.
2. The act of throwing lots of manpower and late nights at a project, esp. to get it out before deadline. See also gang bang, Mongolian Hordes technique; however, the term firefighting connotes that the effort is going into chasing bugs rather than adding features.