Helicopter bucket
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A-Flex collapsible Monsoon Bucket.

This photo, taken from a USN UH-3 Sea King, shows a Bambi bucket used to combat brush fires in California.

A helicopter bucket is a specialised bucket suspended on a cable carried by a helicopter to deliver water for aerial firefighting. Each bucket has a release valve on the bottom which is controlled by the helicopter crew. When the helicopter is in position, the crew releases the water to extinguish or surpress the fire below. Each release of the water is referred to as a drop. The design of the buckets allows the helicopter to hover over a water source–such as a lake, river, pond, or tank–and lower the bucket into the water to refill it. This allows the helicopter crew to operate the bucket in remote locations without the need to return to a permanent operating base, reducing the time between successive drops.

Buckets can be collapsible or rigid and vary in capacity from 72 to 2,600 gallons (275 to 9,840 liters). The size of each bucket determines the lifting capacity of the helicopter required to utilise each version. Some buckets can include fire retardant foam or the ability to pump water from the bucket into an internal tank. Smaller collapsible buckets can use water sources as shallow as 1 foot (30.5 cm). Worldwide, the term monsoon bucket is widely used and accepted as a generic term. In the United States, this type of bucket is officially referred to as a helibucket^[1]. The trademarked Bambi Bucket is also commonly used informally by firefighting crews to describe buckets developed by other manufacturers.

Variants

Bambi Bucket

Collapsible bucket developed by Canadian Don Arney and produced by SEI Industries since 1983.^[2]

A-Flex Firefighting Monsoon Bucket

Collapsible bucket produced by A-Flex Technology.^[3]

HELiFIRE Monsoon Bucket

Collapsible bucket produced by Fire & Rescue New Zealand, a non-governmental rural fire service.^[4]

See also

• Helitack — helicopter-delivered fire resources

References

Gallery

A CH-47 Chinook with a 2,000 gallon Bambi Bucket during a training mission

A Bell 212 refills its bucket from a pumpkin tank, a temporary water source set up by fire crews.

Sikorsky S-58T fire fighting with a Bambi Bucket

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Helicopter bucket

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