Calaveras County, CA Fire Regulations: Outdoor Burning (2026)

Section 8.08.080.A of the Hazardous Fire Areas chapter bars anyone from building, igniting or maintaining an outdoor fire of any kind, for any purpose, in a mapped hazardous fire area without a written permit from the county fire warden, the State Department of Forestry or the U.S. Forest Service. The permit authority may attach conditions needed to prevent the fire from escaping, and may refuse a permit until those conditions are met (Section 8.08.030).

Subsection C layers a burn-ban authority on top of the permit system: regardless of whether a permit has been issued, no outdoor fire may be built, ignited or maintained in a hazardous fire area if no person seventeen years or older is present at all times to watch and is capable of tending it, or at any time the county has publicly announced that there is to be no open burning. That public no-burn announcement functions as the county's burn-ban trigger, independent of any individual permit already on file.

The hazardous fire area itself is not the whole county; it is land mapped by the county fire warden, working with the State Department of Forestry and the U.S. Forest Service, as grass, grain, brush or forest-covered land where a fire would be abnormally difficult to suppress (Section 8.08.020). Open-flame devices such as welding torches and tar pots face a parallel permit rule at Section 8.08.070, and the fire warden may also close an especially hazardous posted area to entry entirely under Section 8.08.050.