Illegal/Unattended Campfire Incident Coding

How do I code an illegal/unattended campfire incident?

Illegal campfires

A campfire can be illegal (for example if there are fire restrictions in place) or it could be in violation because of size, placement or due to being left unatended. Such a campfire would be coded as 561 – Unauthorized Burning.

Legal campfires

Note: NFIRS 5.0 coding is “how turned out” not “how toned out”. An incident may be toned as an illegal or unattended campfire, but if (upon arrival) one finds a legal campfire, safe and attended, it is not coded this way but as No Incident Found aka Unable to Locate (UTL).

Do not confuse with authorized controlled burning

Do not confuse a legal campfire with 631 – Authorized Controlled Burning which is when an individual was burning land, vegetation or some type of agricultural field. Do not use this code for a campfire or fire pit. Normally, this incident type code would be used if a landowner was given permission to burn land or debris on their property.