I have a question regarding rules about extinguishing the fire with water buckets

The rules read like this:

EXTINGUISHING THE FIRE

Each time a hero enters a water space, he may pick up

1 bucket of water. If he does, place 1 blue objective

token on his Hero sheet. Each hero cannot carry more

than 1 bucket of water.

Each time a hero carrying a bucket of water suffers 1 or

More dam, he tests strength or awareness. If he fails, he drops the bucket

of water and places the blue objective token back near

the River.

As an action, a hero that is carrying a bucket of water

while on the Cabin or House may douse the flame.

If he does and the associated red objective tokens are

faceup, flip them facedown; if the red objective tokens

are already facedown, discard them instead. For each

objective token discarded in this way, the heroes place 1

villager token in their play area (see "Victory").

Now does that mean you can only use the bucket to douse the flames once or several times?
It isn't really stated in the text above. But I would think that the bucket is empty after one use.

I'm a bit surprised there isn't a "then place the water bucket back near the river..."

Let me take a look at the quest guide. What you've posted here seems to indicate that a hero could use a bucket until forced to drop it by taking damage.

My group played this quest recently. The quest description doesn't say that a bucket can only be used once. Consequently, although thematically it doesn't make much sense, we allowed the heroes to use the same bucket more than once. The encounter did turn out balanced enough, with the heroes dousing half the flames.

They could be big buckets... or small flames.

Hmm... self replenishing water buckets. Now there's a magic item for a firefighter

Makes it possible to discard all tokens on one location during one heroes turn if said hero started his or her turn on the location with a bucket.

It is well known that this quest already is heavily favoring the heroes and this seems to make it even easier.

To me it seems wrong - but I agree the rules do not say otherwise. It will be interesting to play this scenario and see if I have the same experience as you Lucaster.

if you research burning houses, those aren't small flames, and a village where you can only see two houses isn't going to have magic buckets. I don't think it is possible to get more than two for either side, i believe it is the most balanced mission in the entire hires of blood. we played where you ran out of water and had to go back. ill mention it with my group and see what the group has to say about it.

side note, the first time i did that as overlord, I used the merriod to flail the two heroes in reach and one of them dropped their bucket, it was so awesome.