San Juan County Fire Department Lands $1 Million Ladder Truck Grant

With 19 full-time firefighters spread across more than 5,000 square miles and average call response personnel down nearly 38 percent since 2018, San Juan County's fire department has been operating under documented strain. A $1 million federal earmark for a new ladder truck marked real progress toward addressing that gap when Fire Chief David Vega told county commissioners at their May 21, 2025 meeting in Aztec that the grant request had been approved.

The funding was jointly secured by Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, Sen. Ben Ray Luján, and Sen. Martin Heinrich as Congressionally Directed Spending in the FY26 Agriculture, Rural Development, FDA, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, which was signed into law as part of a deal that ended a government shutdown. All three, along with the two remaining members of New Mexico's all-Democratic congressional delegation, voted against the overall package, citing the bill's failure to extend expiring Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies.

The new truck is designated for the southeastern corner of San Juan County, covering Blanco, Navajo Dam, and multiple Navajo Nation chapters. County spokesman Devin Neeley noted the county had to wait until the federal funds arrived before placing an order; once ordered, delivery was expected to take two to three years.

That timeline reflects the scale of the department's equipment backlog. Vega, who became fire chief in January 2023, identified more than $5 million in trucks and equipment for replacement over the next five years, making the ladder truck grant one-fifth of that identified need.

The staffing picture sharpens the urgency. San Juan County Fire and Rescue operates 22 stations backed by approximately 100 active volunteers, but the average number of personnel responding to calls fell from 5.49 in 2018 to 3.43 in 2023, a decline Vega attributed partly to COVID-19 disruptions and increasingly demanding training requirements. Seven of the county's former 10 fire districts had dropped below the state-mandated minimum of four trained firefighters per structure fire response, forcing a reorganization that collapsed those districts into four broader service regions.

The ladder truck grant is part of a larger regional package from the same legislation. The FY26 appropriations bills included just over $3 million for fire trucks and communications equipment across San Juan County, Rio Arriba County, Questa, and Truchas combined. The Truchas Volunteer Fire Department received $750,000; Rio Arriba County was awarded $1.1 million to modernize firefighting communications equipment. Luján announced the San Juan County award as part of more than $202 million he helped secure for New Mexico across the signed FY26 bills.