Napa, CA Fire Regulations: Outdoor Burning (2026)

Outdoor burning around Napa involves three overlapping authorities. (1) Inside Napa city limits: Open burning of weeds, brush, and rubbish is generally prohibited; the Napa Municipal Code requires residents to dispose of cleared vegetation through approved means (curbside green-waste collection through Napa Recycling and Waste Services, the Devlin Road Transfer Station, or a CAL FIRE chipping event) rather than burning. (2) Air-quality layer: Napa is within the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. BAAQMD Regulation 5 (Open Burning) prohibits residential burning of trash, leaves, garbage, treated wood, plastic, and tires, and during winter inversion episodes BAAQMD declares 'Spare the Air' alerts that prohibit all residential wood-burning (including in fireplaces) across the nine-county Bay Area. Limited agricultural burning is allowed only with a BAAQMD permit on declared burn days. (3) State wildland layer: For parcels in CAL FIRE State Responsibility Areas surrounding Napa (much of the east and west hillsides), a CAL FIRE Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit (LNU) burn permit from burnpermit.fire.ca.gov is required before any outdoor burn and is suspended during the annual fire-season closure (typically May through fall rains). Permitted burn hours below 1,000 feet elevation are 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with the fire fully out by 5 p.m. Recreational fires meeting California Fire Code Section 307.4.2 are treated separately and remain available outside no-burn periods.