What is a Bambi Bucket, being used by an IAF helicopter to fight Nainital forest fires?

Bambi Bucket is a specialised aerial firefighting tool which has been in use since the 1980s.

A US Navy SH-60 Sea Hawk helicopter drops water from a Bambi Bucket over a target area during the annual Cory Iverson Wildland Firefighting exercise at the Las Pulgas Lake on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, April 19, 2023. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Indian Air Force’s MI 17 V5 helicopter was deployed on Saturday (April 27) to extinguish the raging forest fires in Nainital district, Uttarakhand, according to the state’s Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami.

The helicopter used a “Bambi Bucket”, also known as a helicopter bucket or a helibucket, to collect water from Bhimtal lake, located near Nainital, and poured it over the burning forests. Here is a look at what a Bambi Bucket is and how it was invented.

What is a Bambi Bucket?

Bambi Bucket is a specialised aerial firefighting tool which has been in use since the 1980s. It is essentially a lightweight collapsible container that releases water from underneath a helicopter to targeted areas. The water is released by using a pilot-controlled valve.

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One of its key features is that it can be quickly and easily filled. The bucket can be filled from various sources, including lakes and swimming pools, which allows firefighters to swiftly refill it and return to the target area.

Bambi Bucket is available in a variety of sizes and models, with capacities ranging from 270 litres to more than 9,840 litres.

Empty Bambi Bucket. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

How was the Bambi Bucket invented?

The Bambi Bucket was invented by Don Arney, a Canadian business, in 1982. Arney came up with the idea after he realised that the aerial firefighting water buckets in use at the time were not efficient and had a high failure rate.

These water buckets were generally made of “solid fibreglass, plastic, or canvas with metal frames” and were “too rigid to fit inside the aircraft” and had to be “trucked to fire sites or flown in on the hook of a helicopter thereby slowing the aircraft down,” according to the National Inventors Hall of Fame’s website. Another issue was that the water dropped from these containers used to get dispersed into a spray thereby reducing impact.

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Bambi Bucket does not have these limitations. One, it can be stored within the helicopter until development. Two, it discharges a solid column of water, “resulting in a more accurate and effective water dump, less evaporation on the descent, and greater impact force,” the website added.

Bambi Bucket discharges a solid column of water. (Photo: NASA/Frankie Martin)

It was an instant success and began to be widely used for firefighting. Today, Bambi Bucket is used in more than 115 countries around the world by more than 1,000 helicopter operators, according to SEI Industries Ltd — a company, established by Arney, which manufactures the tool.

In 2017, Arney was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame for the invention of the Bambi Bucket.

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