Check the burn status
Last updated:
You do not need an account to check the status. Enter an address or a town, or let the app use your location, and choose the kind of burning you plan to do.
Steps
- Go to BeforeYouBurn or open the app.
- Enter your address or town, or use your current location.
- Choose the kind of burning, such as debris burning.
- Read the answer at the top of the page, and the reason under it.
What the answers mean
Several agencies can have rules for the same place: your fire district, the state forestry department, an air-quality agency, a federal land manager. We check every one of them and give you one answer.
| Answer | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Burning is allowed | Every agency that covers this place allows this kind of burning now. | You may register and burn, following the agencies' terms. Check again before you light. |
| Burning is not allowed | At least one agency does not allow it now. A single "no" is enough. | Do not burn. The page says which agency closed burning and, where known, when it may reopen. |
| Contact the agency before burning | An agency asks you to contact it directly, for example because it issues its own permits. | Call or visit the agency shown on the page before you burn. |
| Status unknown | We cannot confirm the status, usually because an agency here has not set up its rules with us. | Do not assume you may burn. Contact the agency shown on the page. |
We never show "allowed" unless every agency has explicitly allowed burning. When something is missing or unclear, the answer is "Status unknown" or "Contact the agency", never "allowed".
Who decided
Under the answer you see each agency that covers the place and its reason, for example "Closed by the state forestry department: fire season". The contact shown is your response agency: the fire agency that responds to fires at this place. If no response agency is named, we show the nearest covering agency and say it is a fallback.
The time of the answer
Every answer shows As of a date and time. The status can change during the day, for example when wind picks up. In the app, an answer that is more than a few minutes old, or that was saved while you were offline, is shown as the last known status and is never shown as allowed. Check again when you are back online.
Fire danger
When an agency or the state publishes a fire-danger level for the place, we show it with its source. When nobody has published one, we show nothing rather than guess. Fire danger and weather are information: they do not change the answer by themselves. An agency may set its own rule that closes burning on high danger or poor air quality, and then the closure says so.