Spare the Air Alert: Wood Fire Ban Now Extended Through Tuesday

Update, 8 a.m. Wednesday: The Spare the Air Alert was lifted for Wednesday, Dec. 21.

You can still roast your chestnuts — just not on an open fire.

That's the order from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which extended Monday's Spare the Air Alert through Tuesday.

During this period, the alert makes it illegal for nearly everyone in the nine-county Bay Area region to burn wood, manufactured fire logs or any other solid fuel, including garbage — either indoors or outdoors.

Natural gas, propane or electric fireplaces, however, are still allowed, the district said, as are certain registered wood-fired stoves in the tiny percentage of homes in the region that have no other heating source.

Why a Spare the Air alert?

The Spare the Air directive comes in response to a combination of patchy dense fog and light offshore winds, causing "limited vertical mixing" that can prevent woodsmoke and other pollutants from rising above ground level. The resulting higher-than-normal air pollution levels — expected to rise above 100 on the air quality index, or API, this week in some parts of the Bay Area — can be unhealthy for sensitive groups.

"During the wintertime, you get these inversions, which is basically [when] the atmospheric ceiling gets lowered," said Ralph Borrmann, spokesperson with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. "So it's sort of like you're smoking in a room now, instead of smoking outside."

In other words, that lowered ceiling causes pollutants to build up over time, "without any way to ventilate or go up into the higher atmosphere and get dissipated," Borrmann added.

Borrmann stressed that Spare the Air Alerts, while more common in warmer months due to ozone levels and wildfire smoke, can be called at any time of year when AQI levels are unusually high.

As many as 1.5 million households in the Bay Area have fireplaces, Borrmann said. And while cozy in chilly weather, their increased use at this time of year can have serious adverse consequences, particularly when the smoke "has nowhere to go," he explained.

Like cigarette or wildfire smoke, woodsmoke contains harmful carcinogenic substances, such as particulate matter and carbon monoxide. Exposure to it has been linked to serious respiratory illnesses and increased risk of heart attacks, and is particularly harmful for children, older people and those with respiratory conditions, the district said.

Enforcing the burning ban

So how does the Bay Area Air Quality Management District make sure the region's residents adhere to a Spare the Air alert?

"We do have inspectors that go out and they concentrate on areas where we have the most complaints and they issue violation notices," Borrmann said. "Usually the first offense, you get to go to smoke school, which is sort of the DMV equivalent of online driving class."

Those who decline to take the course have to pay a $100 ticket. A second violation is subject to a $500 fine, with the amount sharply increasing for any subsequent violations, the air district said.

Higher-than-normal air pollution levels are expected to continue through the end of the week, which means the district could again extend the burning ban, Borrmann said.

"You know, these are meteorologists. So they like to be accurate and issue things one day at a time," he said.

"It's going to be evaluated day by day."