Cobb County, GA Fire Regulations: Outdoor Burning (2026)

Cobb County Code Chapter 54, Article VIII (Outdoor Burning) applies only within unincorporated Cobb County; Marietta, Smyrna, Kennesaw, Acworth, Powder Springs, and Austell enforce their own fire codes. Section 54-111 makes the article supplemental to state air-quality law, so a stricter state EPD rule controls over the county's when the two conflict.

Section 54-114 lists the outright prohibitions: burning petroleum-based products such as tires, plastics, and roof shingles that produce black smoke (54-114(a)); burning any garbage (54-114(b)); burning material in a barrel, though a commercial incinerator or combustion unit with at least 36 percent open surface area is not a barrel under the Section 54-112 definitions (54-114(c)); and any burning at all when sustained wind reaches 10 mph or atmospheric conditions would keep smoke low to the ground (54-114(d)). Yard waste may only be burned on the property where it fell or was cut, never hauled to another lot (54-114(e)), and no fire may be set on the surface of a county, city, or private road (54-114(f)). Beyond these fixed bans, the fire chief of Cobb County Fire and Emergency Services holds standing authority to prohibit all outdoor burning countywide when weather or local conditions make fires hazardous (54-114(g)), to order any fire extinguished if it interferes with a neighbor's use of property (54-114(h)), and to impose a burn ban in one neighborhood on written medical documentation that smoke is harming a resident's health (54-114(i)).

Section 54-113 exempts grilling, wood stoves and fireplaces inside a habitable building, chimeneas and outdoor fireplaces at single-family homes, and flag retirement ceremonies, but garbage still may not be burned in any of them. Recreational fires, yard-waste piles, bonfires, and land-clearing burns stay legal only under the setback, size, and hour limits in Sections 54-116 and 54-117, several of which require a Fire and Emergency Services permit before the match is lit.