Fire pits are illegal in Chelsea. Not just on the sidewalk or in a park: in your own backyard, on your own deck, in a store-bought steel bowl with a screen on top. The city put out a video this week with Chelsea Firefighter Kevin Rosado explaining the rule, and the reason is the city’s history.
The rule
Massachusetts allows open burning in most of the state between January 15 and May 1, with a permit from the local fire department. It does not allow it at all in 22 densely built cities and towns, and the state’s own list, on mass.gov, names them: Arlington, Belmont, Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, Chicopee, Everett, Fall River, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell, Malden, Medford, New Bedford, Newton, Somerville, Springfield, Waltham, Watertown, West Springfield and Worcester. In those communities open burning is prohibited at all times.
The state page adds that cities and towns may separately regulate or prohibit chimineas, fire pits and outdoor fireplaces, and tells residents to ask their fire department. Chelsea’s answer, in the city’s own words this week, is that there is “no open burning of any kind: no fire pits, no logs, no leaves, no brush, no trash. Nothing.”
Revere is not on the state’s prohibited list. If you live in Revere, the fire department issues seasonal open burning permits under the state rules, and any fire pit rule is the city’s own.
Why Chelsea
The city’s video makes the argument in one sentence: Chelsea has had two Great Fires, and with homes and buildings this close together one outdoor fire can put a neighborhood at risk. The first, on April 12, 1908, started at a factory on West Third Street in a 40-mile gale and burned across the city to the water. The second, on October 14, 1973, started in the Rag Shop District below Everett Avenue and took 18 blocks in five hours. We published the full account of the 1973 fire this week. Both fires were wind-driven, both spread building to building through wood-frame construction, and both started small.
Chelsea is the most densely populated city in Massachusetts, and most of its housing is two- and three-family wood-frame buildings with a few feet between them. A fire pit on a deck in that setting is a different thing from a fire pit on an acre in Boxford.
What you can do instead
Gas and propane grills are cooking appliances, not open burning, and are allowed. Propane fire tables are a gray area that depends on how the fire department reads them, and the department’s non-emergency line is the place to ask before you buy one. Wood, charcoal in anything other than a grill, leaves, brush and trash are out. The department’s non-emergency line is listed on the city website.