GOOD HOPE, Ohio — The Wayne Township Fire Department is reminding Fayette County residents that Ohio’s annual fall restrictions on outdoor burning took effect Thursday, barring most open burning during daytime hours through the end of November.
The statewide ban, laid out in Ohio Revised Code 1503.18, has been state law since 1988 and is not a local rule created by any individual fire department, the department said in a Facebook post. It applies every March, April and May, and again every October and November, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day.
The department said it made several calls to state agencies to gather additional detail for residents ahead of this year’s restriction. Officials said the spring and fall timing is tied to the driest, most fire-prone stretches of the calendar, when dead leaves and dormant grass combine with dry, windy weather to raise the risk that an outdoor fire escapes control.
The law does not prohibit a responsibly attended campfire, according to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, which defines open burning as any outdoor fire without a chimney or stack. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has said it is not seeking to stop residents from maintaining a supervised cooking fire. However, anyone whose campfire escapes and spreads is still in violation of state law, so fires should be watched at all times and fully extinguished before being left unattended.
Even outside the restricted months and hours, anyone conducting an open burn must have the landowner’s permission, remain with the fire while it burns and take reasonable precautions to keep it from spreading, the department said.
Certain materials may never be burned anywhere in Ohio, at any time of year: food waste, dead animals, and anything containing rubber, grease, asphalt or petroleum products.
Other statewide restrictions include keeping fires more than 1,000 feet from a neighbor’s inhabited building, a prohibition on burning during any air pollution alert, warning or emergency, and a ban on burning within village or city limits or other restricted areas. Smoke from a fire also cannot be allowed to obscure visibility on roadways, railways or airfields, and no waste generated off the property may be burned there.
Residents with questions about local burning regulations were encouraged to contact their fire department. More information on the state’s open-burning law is available through the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry at forestry.ohiodnr.gov.
The information contained in this story was obtained from the Wayne Township Fire Department.
