Santa Fe, NM Fire Regulations: Outdoor Burning (2026)

Santa Fe's outdoor-burning rule lives in the criminal code, not the fire-prevention chapter, which makes it enforceable by the police department rather than only the fire marshal. 1, Improper Handling of Fire, lists five separate ways a person can violate it: setting a fire to vegetation or forest material on someone else's land without permission; letting a fire escape or spread because reasonable precautions were not taken; burning vegetation on your own land, not just someone else's, without proper precaution at all times to prevent the fire from escaping; leaving an unattended campfire on another person's land; and starting a fire with a cigarette, cigar, or match in vegetation and walking away while it is still burning.

The ordinance carves out one narrow exception: a backfire deliberately set to stop the progress of a fire that is already burning does not count as improper handling. Every violation, regardless of which of the five ways it happened, is a petty misdemeanor, and Santa Fe adopted this local offense as directly parallel to the state-law equivalent at Section 30-17-1 NMSA 1978, so a Santa Fe police officer can cite under the city code without waiting for a county or state fire authority to act.

Because the statute reaches burning on the violator's own property, a homeowner burning brush or leaves without taking precautions to stop the fire from spreading is exposed under paragraph (3) even without any complaint from a neighbor, and the standard is not a bright-line ban on flame but a negligence-style duty to prevent escape and abandonment of the fire.