Saving Lives and Lands with the Bambi Bucket and Other Inventions | 1:01:41

A conversation with Don Arney

By Rosanne Wagger

Don Arney, a long-time practitioner of the TM and TM-Sidhi® programs, talks about his career as an inventor and businessman and how his TM practice helps him dive deep within to find inspiration and creative solutions to everyday problems. When asked what he is most proud of in his career, Mr. Arney says, “Inventing useful things—especially the Bambi Bucket® that has stood the test of time and has saved many lives and properties.”

In this podcast, Don describes how diving deep in meditation has allowed him to find the infinite value in solutions and see that each part of the solution contains the entirety.

Bambi Buckets deployed to fight post explosion fires in Beirut.

Helicopters and other aircraft are often used to combat fires which cannot be controlled by personnel on the ground and the practice is a fairly expensive one. Various online sources cite to a 2003 statement from the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management that those agencies own, contract or lease 1,000 aircraft for aerial firefighting each year at an annual cost of more than $250 million as of 2003.

In the back of a tree-lined industrial mall a few miles from Vancouver International Airport, a fellow named Jerry is playing with water.

Renowned for its Bambi Bucket Aerial Firefighting solutions, SEI Industries holds a strong belief in putting its customers first to deliver the best.
By Dayna Fedy, Insight Magazine 2019

Pilot of helicopter that rescued the victims: "The situation is terrible, and people are very scared".

Monday, October 2nd, is the 33rd anniversary of the issue of a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office covering a technology which continues to play a great role in dousing the flames of major infernos.

This summer, while Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria pummeled Texas, Florida, and the Caribbean, one of the worst wildfire seasons ever ravaged over 10 million acres across the western United States and Canada. Fortunately, an ingenious invention called the Bambi Bucket® is helping first-responders and the National Guard battle wildland fires from the sky.

Before 1980’s fighting forest fires with helicopters was a hassle. The huge rigid containers hanging down from the hooks slowed down helicopters on their way to the site. The complicated trap doors of these buckets often stopped working. Luckily, one day, the inventor Don Arney had an insight that changed the game.

Salt Spring Island entrepreneur Don Arney has been a big-dream inventor since childhood. One of his earliest ideas was for a blimp/airplane hybrid and while still just 12, he drew up a proposal and sent it to the president of the Avro Canada aviation company.

Nebraska National Guard crewmembers of Company C 2nd-135th General Support Aviation Battalion use a Bambi Bucket to dump water onto flames in Larimer County, Colorado. Staff Sgt Tate Petersen Photo

Recognition of a phenomenal invention that transformed the world of aerial firefighting and a company that continues to create and contribute on a global scale has earned Don Arney the honour of being a 2017 inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

SEI Industries may be famous for creating a product named Bambi, but it is anything but meek and mild on the international firefighting scene.

For many companies, keeping their operations running smoothly with a supply of fuel in a remote location can create a number of expensive challenges.

It was originally meant to fight forest fires, but an innovation from a B.C.-based company is being used by the Japanese military to douse water on the country's dangerously overheated nuclear reactors.

The field crew has just ended the final round of helicopter sites.  I stayed on terra firma for this round, and as such the past few days have taken on a more relaxed pace.

As British Columbia’s worst fire summer in memory comes to a close, we’ve become used to seeing television footage of firefighting helicopters carrying bright orange bags full of water.

A list of notable individuals who have practiced or learned the Transcendental Meditation technique, introduced by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.