Department of Interior (DOI), Office of Wildland Fire (OWF) - Slip-on Tanker Units

Wildfire activity is increasing. Drought and prolonged, increased temperatures are creating conditions that allow wildfires to start earlier in the year, enable them to last longer, and make them more difficult to control. Increasingly intense wildfires and prolonged droughts then lead to an influx of invasive species that burn more easily than native vegetation and in turn propel still more extreme wildfire activity. As a result, wildfires are now occurring in places where they were previously extremely rare, with more land burning, on average, each year. This is leading to a year-round wildfire season, now referred to as a fire year, throughout the country. The frequency of large wildfires is also increasing, particularly near communities. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), enacted in November 2021, is bringing much-needed support to communities across the country to increase the resilience of lands facing the threat of wildland fires and to better support federal wildland firefighters. The BIL provides funding and authorizes the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to develop and implement a pilot program to provide local governments with financial assistance to acquire slip-on tanker units to establish fleets of vehicles that can be quickly converted to be operated as fire engines. The objective of this opportunity is to provide funding for these units that meet the required minimum specifications as outlined in Attachment 1.