In light of the incident in which a firefighter was rescued from an advancing wildfire by climbing into a water bucket under a helicopter and being flown to safety, I sent a Twitter message to @BambiBucketeer, the account of Bambi Bucket, a company that manufactures some of the more popular buckets. I asked them:
Will your next Bambi Bucket model include seat belts?
Their reply was:
and 7 airbags plus an extra-size cup-holder. Stay tuned for press release in 2013!
Gotta have that cup holder!
Truth is stranger than fiction. Here is a patent for just this idea:
Helicopter water bucket improvements United States Patent 7588087 :
A collapsible wild fire fighting water bucket made from pliable material and … The buckets also are equipped with emergency extractor Jump Seats, secured to the inside wall of the bucket to be used for dire straits emergency extraction of wild fire ground crews trapped by fire storm.