Dallas County, TX Fire Regulations: Outdoor Burning (2026)

Sec. 38-1(a) of the Dallas County Code prohibits burning combustible materials outside an enclosure that contains all flames and sparks anywhere in the unincorporated county, with narrow exemptions for household trash burned in fire-marshal-approved barrels, trench burning, and charcoal grills. The fire marshal's office enforces this alongside the Dallas County Fire Code adopted in Sec. 38-31, which incorporates the International Fire Code and NFPA/UL standards and controls conditions hazardous to life and property from fire or explosion within the unincorporated areas and on all county-owned buildings and property regardless of location.

A separate layer of restriction applies on days the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's predecessor, the state air control board, issues an ozone alert for the Dallas-Fort Worth area: Sec. 106-243(a)(4) states plainly that the county fire marshal will not issue open burning permits for the county's unincorporated areas while the alert is active, and Sec. that day. These ozone-alert provisions exist because roughly 91 percent of the ozone-forming emissions in the region come from vehicles, engines, paints, and solvents, per Sec. 106-241's stated purpose, so open burning is curtailed alongside vehicle and equipment use on alert days.