Warwick, RI Fire Regulations: Outdoor Burning (2026)

Section 20-4 states the prohibition in a single sentence: no person shall set or maintain an open fire within the city, with no permit or registration process to work around it. The section defines open fire broadly, covering any fire from which the products of combustion are emitted directly into the open air without passing through a stack or chimney, so it reaches backyard bonfires, brush and leaf burning, and burn barrels alike, not just large blazes. Only two carve-outs exist: fires set or maintained by, or at the direction of, the city fire department, and fires used for cooking, such as a grill or fire pit used to prepare food.

Nothing in § 20-4 authorizes the fire chief to grant individual burn permits the way § 20-6 lets the director of public works issue blasting permits; the open-fire rule is an outright ban rather than a permit system. The chapter's general fire-prevention provisions give the police department and fire department authority to inspect premises for related hazards, and a separate section bans setting fires at the city dump or depositing combustible material there without written authorization from the director of public works. 00, imprisonment of up to 30 days, or both, with each day the violation continues counted as a separate offense enforceable in municipal court.