Interior Department’s Office of Wildland Fire Awards $5 Million to Strengthen Local Governments’ Wildfire Response

A “slip‑on tanker unit” is a self‑contained firefighting package that can be bolted or strapped into the back of a pickup, flatbed, or similar truck so the vehicle functions like a small fire engine.
Typical components include:

• A water tank (often a few hundred gallons)
• A gasoline‑ or diesel‑powered pump
• Hose reel(s) and nozzles, valves, and a control panel
• Sometimes a small foam tank and basic storage for tools

Operation on a local vehicle: the whole unit is loaded as one “skid” into the truck bed or onto a flatbed, secured, and then connected to the unit’s own engine. Firefighters start the unit’s pump, pull hose from the reel, and spray water (or water‑foam mix) on the fire while another firefighter drives or parks the truck. Because everything is on one removable frame, the truck can be returned to normal use by lifting the unit out.

Executive Order 14308, “Empowering Commonsense Wildfire Prevention and Response” (June 12, 2025), is a presidential order issued after major Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025. It aims to:

• Streamline and consolidate federal wildland fire programs between Interior and Agriculture for more efficient use of budgets, staffing, and decision‑making.
• Push more support and incentives for state, local, and tribal governments to improve wildfire prevention, fuels management, and mutual‑aid agreements.
• Develop a technology roadmap for wildfire detection, mapping, and forecasting (e.g., satellites, AI‑driven models, ignition detection).
• Loosen or revise federal rules that may limit prescribed burning or the use of fire retardant, and promote using forest biomass to reduce fuels.
• Develop performance metrics for wildfire response (e.g., response times, amount of fuels treated) and remove outdated regulations that slow prevention or response.

The Slip‑on Tanker Pilot Program is one of the “commonsense, technology‑enabled” local support measures Interior cites as implementing this EO.

For this round of Slip‑on Tanker Pilot Program funding, eligible applicants were:

• U.S. local governments that provide fire protection and other emergency services (e.g., municipal fire departments, county fire districts, tribal or other local governmental fire/emergency agencies), and
• That “are in need of slip‑on tankers to improve the wildland firefighting readiness for their area of protection” and
• That serve a location with a population of 50,000 or less.

“Areas with a population of 50,000 or less” is defined using the location the local government serves (its primary service area or jurisdiction). Population is based on federal demographic data (e.g., Census/official estimates) for that service area; the program’s earlier 2024–25 rounds used the same construct but with a 25,000‑person cap.

Public documents indicate three main selection filters, plus additional programmatic judgment:

1. Basic eligibility – being a local government fire/emergency provider serving an area ≤50,000 population and needing slip‑on units (screened via the application and NOFO criteria).
2. Wildfire risk – applicants had to serve communities with at least moderate to high wildfire risk as defined by the Wildfire Risk to Communities tool; the DOI press release states all 97 recipients met this threshold.
3. Program objectives and available funds – awards had to fit within the statutory pilot authority and the $5.08 million available, with grant sizes between $10,000 and $500,000.

The detailed scoring factors (for example, how need, local capacity, or interagency roles were weighed) are in the full funding announcement and attachments on Grants.gov/Simpler.Grants.gov. Those documents are referenced but not fully accessible here, so specific point‑by‑point scoring criteria beyond eligibility and risk cannot be definitively listed from publicly viewable text.

Coordination occurs on two levels:

• Policy/structure: Executive Order 14308 directs Interior and USDA to consolidate and better coordinate wildland fire programs. In September 2025, the two departments jointly announced the plan to create a U.S. Wildland Fire Service, intended to unify and modernize federal wildland firefighting operations. That plan explicitly implements EO 14308 and is meant to align Interior and USDA efforts, including support to local partners.
• Program implementation: The Slip‑on Tanker Pilot Program is run by Interior’s Office of Wildland Fire but is part of the broader federal strategy for mitigation and response that both Interior and the U.S. Forest Service (USDA) implement together (e.g., via the National Interagency Fire Center and the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission’s recommendations on collaboration).

The press release does not spell out a unique, formal mechanism (like a joint review board) linking these specific grants to the Forest Service or the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service, beyond this overall coordinated framework.

The Interior press release only states that “a new round of grant opportunities through the Slip‑on Tanker Pilot Program will be announced in early 2026” and that “additional details about the next application window will be posted on grants.gov.” No exact opening date, required forms list, or specific Grants.gov posting ID is given yet.

Based on the 2024–25 round (funding opportunity D25AS00131), applicants can expect:

• A Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) on Grants.gov/Simpler.Grants.gov with: eligibility requirements; instructions; and standard federal forms (e.g., SF‑424, project narrative template, budget, assurances).
• Attachments describing technical specifications for slip‑on units, required narrative questions, and data sources for documenting community risk.

Until the 2026 NOFO is published, the precise opening date, materials, and listing URL are not publicly available.

The Wildfire Risk to Communities tool is a national, web‑based mapping and data site that:

• Shows wildfire risk levels for every U.S. community, county, state, and many Tribal areas.
• Provides maps and charts of wildfire likelihood, potential exposure of homes and people, and social vulnerability.

Who maintains it:

• It is created and maintained by the USDA Forest Service (Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory and partners), under direction from Congress, and is hosted at WildfireRisk.org and on Forest Service research pages.

How it determines “moderate‑to‑high” risk:

• The tool combines national fire‑behavior simulations (how often fires are expected and how intense they could be), vegetation and fuels data, topography, housing and population data, and infrastructure information.
• It then produces relative risk scores, comparing each community to others nationwide (e.g., risk to homes, wildfire likelihood, exposure, and vulnerable populations).
• Interior’s Slip‑on Tanker program uses these modeled outputs to identify communities whose overall wildfire risk metrics fall in at least the “moderate” or “high” bands on the tool’s scales, and only those communities were considered for grants.