A helicopter bucket is a specialised bucket suspended on a cable carried by a
helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...
to deliver water for
aerial firefighting
Aerial may refer to:
Music
* ''Aerial'' (album), by Kate Bush
* ''Aerials'' (song), from the album ''Toxicity'' by System of a Down
Bands
*Aerial (Canadian band)
* Aerial (Scottish band)
* Aerial (Swedish band)
Performance art
* Aerial sil ...
. 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 suppress 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.
Design
![Michigan National Guard firefighting bucket](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Michigan_National_Guard_firefighting_bucket.jpg)
Buckets can be collapsible or rigid and vary in capacity from . The size of each bucket is determined by
the lifting capacity of the helicopter required to utilise each version. Some buckets can include
fire retardant foam
Firefighting foam is a foam used for fire suppression. Its role is to cool the fire and to coat the fuel, preventing its contact with oxygen, thus achieving suppression of the combustion. Firefighting foam was invented by the Russian engineer an ...
or the ability to pump water from the bucket into an internal tank. Smaller collapsible buckets can use water sources as shallow as . 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''. The trademarked ''Bambi Bucket'' is also
commonly used informally by firefighting crews to describe buckets developed by other manufacturers.
Variants
;A-Flex Firefighting Monsoon Bucket
:Collapsible bucket produced by A-Flex Technology
;Bambi Bucket
:Collapsible bucket developed by
Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
Don Arney
Don Arney (born 1947) is a Canadian inventor and entrepreneur best known for inventing the Bambi Bucket, a collapsible helicopter bucket used for fighting forest fires. and produced by SEI Industries since 1983. Bambi Buckets were used in 2011 to cool nuclear reactors in Japan after damage from a tsunami.
;CLOUDBURST Fire Bucket
:Collapsible bucket produced by IMSNZ Ltd.
;FAST Bucket
:Variable Drop, fire fighting bucket that allows the pilot to select drop patterns for bush fires to canopy fires, manufactured by Absolute Fire Solutions
;HELiFIRE Monsoon Bucket
:Collapsible and free-standing monsoon buckets produced by Rural Fire Service in New Zealand
;Water Hog Bucket
:Lightweight, collapsible, free-standing bucket developed and produced by Aerial Fire Control Pty Ltd since 2001
See also
*
Helicopter rescue basket
A helicopter rescue basket is a basket suspended below a helicopter in order to rescue people from a fire or other disaster site.
Uses
There are two main types of helicopter baskets. The smaller, more common type is used by rescuers to lift a ...
*
Helitack
Helitack crews are teams of wildland firefighters who are transported by helicopter to wildfires. Helicopters provide rapid transport, enabling helitack crews to quickly respond and assess a wildfire situation. Helitack crews may land near a w ...
— helicopter-delivered fire resources
*
Cargo hook (helicopter) A cargo hook is a device suspended below a helicopter and allows the transport of external loads during flight. Common terms for this operation include slingwork, underslung loads, external loadwork, and external load operations.
Hook types
P ...
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Helicopter Bucket
Wildfire suppression equipment
Aerial firefighting
Helicopter equipment