'Bambi Bucket' plays critical role in fighting brush fires in Hillsborough County

How does a ?Bambi Bucket? work?

The Hillsborough County Sheriff?s Office helps fight fires, and the agency does that with a piece of equipment known as the ?Bambi Bucket.? FOX 13?s Russell Rhodes reports.

TAMPA, Fla. - It's a strange-looking contraption attached to a helicopter: a Bambi Bucket. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office uses Bambi Buckets to assist in fighting remote fires.

Sgt. Jason Doyle, Chief Pilot for the HCSO Aviation Unit, says they can use the Bambi Buckets to help out the Florida Forest Service and Hillsborough County Fire Rescue.

So far this year, they have used their Bambi Buckets eight times, dropping 30,000 gallons of water. They are used in the dry season, but also in the rainy part of the year too.

According to Sgt. Doyle, the brush gets sparked by lightning.

"These large fires are in remote areas," Doyle said. "They don't get reported very quickly. Because they are in a remote area, it gives them time to grow before people respond to assess and start to fight the fire."

It takes intense training to fly a helicopter with a Bambi Bucket attached to it. The biggest risk is entanglement. When they dip the bucket in the water, the bucket can get caught on debris.

The risk is outweighed by the benefit of the Bambi Bucket. As Hillsborough County grows, so does the need to protect homes in subdivisions that are being built next to wooded areas and preserves.

Sheriff Chad Chronister says having Bambi Buckets in the Aviation Unit is a force multiplier, enabling Hillsborough County to extinguish fires, save more lives and prevent further damage and destruction.

If you are wondering about where the name Bambi Bucket comes from, the company that sells them says it has nothing to do with a deer, and nothing to do with the name of a waitress in a pub in Idaho. Instead, the inventor was asked what to name his contraption? He laughed and said, "Let's call it a Bambi Bucket."