Guide
Fire: what is burning, and burn bans
Checked October 9, 2026 against the Georgia Forestry Commission, the Environmental Protection Division and the National Interagency Fire Center.
The Fire tile on a Georgia board answers two questions: is anything burning near here, and is my county under a burn ban.
Burn bans: the State Forester’s orders
The Georgia Forestry Commission (GFC) can ban outdoor burning by order of the State Forester. Its first ever was issued on April 22, 2026, for 91 counties in the lower half of the state during the drought, and cut to 17 named counties, Glynn and Camden among them, on May 5. GFC posts its orders as news, and publishes no list a computer can read, so the tile reads GFC’s posts in order.
- A ban that names the county, or the whole state, shows as a burn ban, with the date it was posted and the end date GFC gave.
- A ban for an area GFC describes (“the lower half of the state”) rather than lists shows Check: the tile does not guess which counties it covers.
- A ban with no lift posted shows Check three weeks after its stated end. GFC’s lifts may not reach its website. The May 2026 order for Glynn and Camden ran “through May 22, or until further notice”, and GFC has posted no lift, so those two counties read Check until GFC says otherwise. Call GFC on 1-800-428-7337.
- The summer ban is not on this coast. The Environmental Protection Division’s ban on open burning, May 1 to September 30, covers 54 counties, mostly in the north of the state. None of the six coastal counties is one of them.
- No ban does not mean you may burn anything. Hand-piled leaves and limbs need no permit, but the law sets the rules: 25 feet from woods, 50 from buildings, sunrise to sunset, someone there the whole time. Agriculture, forestry and land-clearing burns need a GFC permit. Counties and towns keep their own rules.
What is burning: the interagency list
The fires on the tile come from the National Interagency Fire Center’s list of current wildfires, the same list the live map draws. The tile shows wildfires in the board’s counties or close enough to matter, and leaves out prescribed burns. A fire that is fully contained drops off a week after it was found.
- It is not every fire. The list holds fires reported to the federal and state fire agencies. Local fire departments put out most woods and marsh fires on this coast without them, and those never reach it. An empty list does not mean nothing is burning.
- Acres and per cent contained are the last figures reported, not live measurements. Contained does not mean out.
- Distance is a straight line from your town to the point the fire was reported from, and it says nothing about where the smoke will go.
Which counties each board shows
- Tybee Island to Sapelo Island: Chatham, Bryan, Liberty and McIntosh counties.
- Brunswick to St. Marys: Glynn and Camden counties.
A fire just over a county line can still be on the tile, if it is close enough to a town on the board.
If you see a fire
Call 911. Nothing on this site reports a fire to anyone.
Sources
- Georgia Forestry Commission, burn permits and notifications — the rules for burning and who needs a permit
- Georgia Forestry Commission, news — the State Forester’s burn ban orders the tile reads
- Environmental Protection Division, summer open burning ban — the 54 counties
- National Interagency Fire Center, open data — the current wildfire list (WFIGS incident locations)