Guide

Fire: what is burning, and burn bans

Checked September 29, 2026 against the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry and the National Interagency Fire Center.

Louisiana publishes no fire danger level for a parish, so the Fire tile on a Louisiana board answers two other questions: is anything burning near here, and is my parish under a burn ban.

Burn bans: the state’s map

The Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry (LDAF), through its Office of Forestry, keeps a burn ban map with one row for every parish, marked either under a burn ban or not. People at the department edit it by hand. The tile reads that map, shows each parish on the board, and dates it by the last change the department made.

• A statewide ban is ordered by the Commissioner of Agriculture and the State Fire Marshal together, under R.S. 40:1602. When one is in force, the map shows every parish under a ban.
• A parish or a city can ban burning of its own. A local ban may not be on the state’s map, so no ban on the tile does not mean you may burn. Ask your parish, or your city, or your fire department.
• What a ban allows depends on the order. The statewide ban of August 2023, for example, banned all private burning but allowed prescribed burns by LDAF or certified burners, farming practices under the state’s Right to Farm law, and barbecue grills, fire pits and small campfires for brief recreational use. It allowed other private burning only with the local fire department’s or local government’s permission. The next order may say something different; read it when one is issued.

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 parishes 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 grass and marsh fires on this coast without them, and those fires never reach it. An empty list means nothing nearby has been reported to it. It 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, not a driving distance, and it says nothing about where the smoke will go.

Which parishes each board shows

• Holly Beach to Morgan City: Cameron, Calcasieu, Vermilion and St. Mary parishes.
• Houma to Grand Isle: Terrebonne, Lafourche and Jefferson parishes.
• Venice to the North Shore: Plaquemines, St. Bernard, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.

If you see a fire

Call 911. Nothing on this site reports a fire to anyone.

Sources

• Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, burn ban map — the parish rows the tile reads
• LDAF, statewide burn ban issued due to concerning dry conditions (August 2023) — who orders a statewide ban, under which statute, and what that order allowed
• National Interagency Fire Center, open data — the current wildfire list (WFIGS incident locations)