Firepit freedom frenzy ignores existing rules

Restricting backyard fires to six hours in the evening appears to have pleased nobody in Saskatoon.

People concerned about the adverse effects of smoke on health have given the decision a mixed review because they would have preferred an outright ban.

Then there are the people who have reacted to city council’s decision to limit backyard fires to the hours of 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. as if their right to vote is being revoked.

One of at least two online petitions seeking to overturn council’s 6-5 decision reads “Let our fire pits burn freely.” Actually, no municipality in Canada allows firepits to burn freely because fire can be dangerous and smoke can be annoying and harmful.

A recent City of Saskatoon report showed that compared to 23 other municipalities in Canada, Saskatoon’s regulations on backyard fires stand out as unusual.

Most cities either have a time limit for burning wood outdoors or a minimum distance for firepits to be located away from homes, sheds, trees and power lines. Saskatoon has neither.

The largest cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal tend to ban such fires entirely. Large Prairie cities like Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg don’t ban them, but they do restrict them with time limits or minimum distances.

Regina bans backyard fires between the hours of 1 a.m. and noon.

In Saskatoon, the fire department used to ask people to extinguish backyard fires prior to 1993, but found it took up too much of firefighters’ time, according to a fire department pamphlet.

Saskatoon’s existing fire department bylaw includes seven conditions for open-air fires, which are intended to address concerns short of an outright ban.

The problem, as council heard last week, is that the regulations are not being enforced. The fire department received 192 complaints in 2016, but only issued a single ticket. Complaints have increased to 236 in 2017.

The problem with enforcing the bylaw is that most complaints come at night when the fire department has to send an entire crew and truck to investigate. Few Saskatoon firefighters are trained to write tickets and most are not trained to deal with drunks gathered around a fire.

There are also issues with getting firefighters to appear in court if necessary, due to their shifting work hours.

So what do Saskatoon’s existing fire regulations say?

Open-air fires need to be “reasonably supervised” and “adequately ventilated” and cannot be set in “windy conditions.” Windy conditions could cover just about any time in Saskatoon.

Those are pretty vague rules subject to interpretation, but it gets even more subjective.

Fires must be extinguished if “smoke from an open-air fire causes an unreasonable interference with the use and enjoyment of another person’s property.”

In other words, if you don’t like the smoke from a neighbour’s firepit at any time, they could be required to snuff it out. The problem lies in enforcing this bylaw, but fire Chief Morgan Hackl promises a better effort in 2018.

Saskatoon appears to already have the tools to enforce nuisance fires, even without the new time limit.

The time limit does not apply to barbecues, which are addressed in a different section. Public firepits like the one at the Meewasin skating rink downtown are covered by a special permit, and community events can also be granted a permit.

Open-air fire rules prohibit burning anything other than charcoal and seasoned wood and set out specifications for acceptable burning receptacles. In 2016, 62 instances of burning banned material were found, along with 38 illegal firepits.

The bylaw specifies one cannot burn garbage, plastics, rubber, manure or animal carcasses.

Do we really need to tell people not to burn manure and animal carcasses? If you’ve read some of the online comments by firepit freedom advocates, you wouldn’t ask. Not only can backyard fires affect lung health, they appear to have an adverse effect on grammar and spelling.

Whether adding a time limit to the existing rules will make any difference remains uncertain when it appears enforcement is the problem.

But don’t tell that to the people whipped into a firepit frenzy.