LaPorte County, IN Fire Regulations: Fire Pits & Backyard Fires (2026)

17, carried from `88 Code § 4-30 (Ord. 90-15, passed 12-3-90), sets the rules for starting a fire anywhere on LaPorte County Parks and Recreation Department property. Subsection (A) bans starting a fire in the park outright, then carves out an exception for small fires for culinary purposes in park grills, or privately owned grills, or fires in a place designated, so long as the materials burned were not taken from the park itself and the Superintendent has given approval; the Superintendent also keeps discretion to prohibit fires for limited periods at any location to protect park property.

Subsection (B) requires that any permitted fire be continuously attended by a competent person and fully extinguished by whoever started or used it before that person leaves the immediate vicinity, so an unattended fire pit is a violation even if it was properly authorized when lit. Subsection (C) adds the physical placement rules: no fire may be built within ten feet of any tree or building, beneath tree branches, or in underbrush, and no portable stoves or grills are allowed in shelters or on combustible picnic tables.

The same subsection separately bars discarding a lit match, cigar, or cigarette anywhere on park property. Because the standard sits inside Chapter 93's park-use rules, it governs fire pits and campfires on LaPorte County park land specifically, not backyard fire pits on private property elsewhere in the unincorporated county.