Pima County, AZ Fire Regulations: Fire Pits & Backyard Fires (2026)

080 starts from a general ban: no one may ignite or maintain an open outdoor fire in a county with independent authority to permit fires, a category that under state law includes only Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties, except as the section allows. Subsection C then carves out fires that never need a permit at all, quoted below. Everything else, agricultural, construction and residential burning, prescribed burns on private land, burning dangerous materials, and burning household waste, needs a permit under subsection D, issued by the control officer or a delegated authority for up to a year, and every permit sets rules on burn hours (no earlier than one hour after sunrise, extinguished two hours before sunset), a fifty-foot clearance from any structure, on-site fire-extinguishing equipment, constant attendance until the fire is fully out, and advance notice to the local fire department.

A cooking or recreational fire pit is exempt from all of that paperwork, but it is not exempt from the chapter's separate ban on burning prohibited materials, including nonpaper garbage, chemically treated or lead-painted wood, tires, plastics, and other listed items, which the code treats as unlawful regardless of whether a permit was needed for the fire itself.