Ohio Fire Map: Track Ohio Wildfires Live in 2026

An Ohio fire map fuses official incident reports, NASA satellite heat detections and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts to track a state where wildfires are mostly small spring debris fires, with two statutory burning windows a year. This page explains when and where Ohio burns and how to follow a fire today.

What does an Ohio fire map show right now?

An Ohio fire map layers official incident reports, satellite thermal detections and active National Weather Service fire-weather alerts into a single view. Ohio wildfires are almost always small and brief, so how quickly a map updates matters more than how large a mapped perimeter looks.

Incident records come from whichever agency responded — usually a local fire department, sometimes ODNR's Division of Forestry or the US Forest Service on the Wayne National Forest — and carry the numbers people quote: acres, cause and containment. Satellite detections from NASA's MODIS and VIIRS instruments and NOAA's GOES satellites report heat within minutes to a few hours, often before a small department has filed any report at all.

When is Ohio's wildfire season?

Ohio law effectively defines the state's wildfire season. Ohio Revised Code 1503.18 restricts open burning in unincorporated areas from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day in March, April and May, and again in October and November, exactly the months ODNR identifies as carrying the state's real wildfire risk.

Spring is the busier of the two. "Careless debris burning is the leading cause of spring wildfires in Ohio," said Greg Guess, State Wildfire Supervisor for ODNR's Division of Forestry, in the agency's spring wildfire season advisory. Dry grass, weeds and leaves left over from winter, combined with wind and low humidity before trees leaf out, make March through May Ohio's highest-risk stretch.

The fall window works the same way in reverse: leaves drop in October and November, and until rain or snow wets them down, they carry fire easily across the ground layer of Ohio's hardwood forests. Interagency reporting recorded 1,107 wildfires burning 2,441 acres in Ohio in 2024, falling to 560 wildfires and 1,134 acres in 2025.

Which agencies fight fires in Ohio?

Local and volunteer fire departments handle the great majority of Ohio wildfires, with the ODNR Division of Forestry providing statewide fire prevention leadership, enforcing open-burning law, and directly managing fire on state forests such as the 63,747-acre Shawnee State Forest. The US Forest Service manages wildfire on the Wayne National Forest in southeastern Ohio.

The Ohio State Fire Marshal, a separate office within the Department of Commerce, can order regional open-burning bans that go beyond ODNR's standard seasonal restrictions when drought conditions demand it, as it did across dozens of counties in September 2024.

State forestry agency

ODNR Division of Forestry, Fire Management Program

Burn ban authority

Ohio State Fire Marshal, Department of Commerce

Geographic coordination

Eastern Area Coordination Center (EACC), a 20-state interagency region

Fire-weather forecasts

NWS Wilmington (ILN) and NWS Cleveland (CLE), by region

Ohio's dispatch and mutual aid run through the same twenty-state Eastern Area Coordination Center that covers Indiana and Iowa, according to NIFC's coordination center listings. Two National Weather Service offices, Wilmington and Cleveland, split fire-weather forecasting responsibility across the state.

Where do Ohio wildfires usually burn?

Ohio wildfires concentrate in the hilly, forested southeast — the Appalachian foothills running through counties like Athens, Vinton, Hocking, Scioto and Lawrence — rather than the flatter, more agricultural north and west. Dry leaf litter on steep, wooded slopes carries fire more readily there than the row-crop land that dominates most of the state.

The Wayne National Forest and Shawnee State Forest, both in that southeastern region, account for a disproportionate share of the acreage burned in state and federal reporting. The September 2024 drought-driven burn ban list reads almost like a map of that same region: Athens, Vinton, Hocking, Gallia, Meigs, Jackson, Pike, Scioto and Washington counties were all included.

Debris burning that escapes control, rather than lightning, drives nearly all of it. ODNR's own guidance names careless debris burning as the leading cause of Ohio's spring fires, and the state's worst single wildfire event in recent memory was set deliberately, not accidentally.

What are the largest wildfires in Ohio history?

Ohio's worst recent wildfire event was not a single ignition but a string of deliberately set fires investigated as one case. In 2022, James A. Bartels, then an administrator at the Greenfield Township Volunteer Fire Department, a police officer, and a Gallia County 911 dispatcher, set 26 separate arson fires across the Wayne National Forest.

The combined fires burned roughly 1,300 acres of federal and state land and drew more than 100 firefighters from several states, according to the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Ohio. The US Forest Service's resulting suppression costs exceeded $638,000.

Bartels was arrested in December 2022, pleaded guilty in September 2023, and was sentenced in February 2025 to 18 months in federal prison plus $638,000 in restitution; he told investigators he set the fires with a lighter to "give the boys something to do" and to distract himself from depression. Ohio does not otherwise publish a ranked historical list of its largest wildfires, because most years produce nothing close to that scale.

What weather drives Ohio fire danger?

Wind, low humidity and cured fuel combine to create Ohio's Red Flag conditions, and both NWS offices covering the state use matching numeric thresholds. NWS Wilmington and NWS Cleveland issue a Red Flag Warning or Fire Weather Watch when 10-hour fuel moisture falls to 8% or below, relative humidity drops to 25% or less, and surface wind — sustained or gusting — reaches 15 mph or more, all sustained together for at least two consecutive hours.

Drought amplifies that baseline risk. Ohio State Fire Marshal Kevin Reardon ordered a regional open-burning ban across dozens of counties in September 2024 as extreme and exceptional drought spread through the southeast, later explaining why a few days of rain didn't change the calculation: "the rain we've had is certainly nice and is a breath of fresh air in some regards, but it's in no way close to replacing the amount of moisture we need to have in our soil in the affected burn ban areas. It's just not enough."

How do evacuations work in Ohio?

County emergency management agencies and local fire departments handle Ohio wildfire evacuations; the state has no formal staged system like the West's Ready-Set-Go or Washington's Level 1-2-3 terminology. Most Ohio fires are contained on a scale of acres, so evacuations are rare and localized, but officials are consistent that residents should not wait for a formal order if they feel unsafe and should self-evacuate when in doubt.

Open-burning bans, not evacuation orders, are Ohio's primary public safety tool during high-risk stretches. The state's seasonal restriction runs automatically every March through May and October through November, and the State Fire Marshal can add a stricter regional ban on top of it during drought, as happened across more than 40 Ohio counties in September 2024. For a look at how a bordering state handles the same underlying risk, see our Indiana fire map page.

Because Ohio's fires move fast but rarely grow large, the standard advice from county officials is simple: leave immediately if told to by a fire department or sheriff, and check your county's current burn ban status before lighting anything outdoors.

How do you read an Ohio fire map in 60 seconds?

An Ohio fire map rewards a quick, consistent check, particularly through the state's statutory spring and fall burning-restriction windows.

1. Open the live fire map and filter to Ohio, or allow location access to see fires within a set distance of you in miles.
2. Check whether an official incident record exists; in Ohio's small, fast fires, satellite heat often appears before any agency has filed a report.
3. Read the timestamps — "Last NIFC update," "Last satellite heat" and "Last GOES heat" — since a small Ohio fire can be fully contained within an hour of detection.
4. Check for an active NWS Red Flag Warning or Fire Weather Watch over your county from NWS Wilmington or NWS Cleveland.
5. Check whether your county has a State Fire Marshal drought ban layered on top of the standard seasonal restriction.
6. Follow your county emergency management office and local news for evacuation guidance if a fire is active nearby.

The same routine applies to fires drifting toward Ohio from neighboring states; see our guide to reading a live US wildfire map for how each layer works, and check the Michigan fire map or Indiana fire map for conditions across the state line.

What does wildfire smoke do to Ohio air quality?

Local Ohio fires are usually too small and short-lived to affect air quality far beyond the fire itself, but the state has repeatedly experienced smoke drifting in from much larger fires elsewhere, most visibly from Canadian wildfires in recent summers. That distant smoke, more than any local fire, has driven Ohio's worst recent air-quality days.

Smoke concentrations, whatever their source, are reported through the EPA's Air Quality Index, which uses six color-coded categories from Good to Hazardous.

Because most Ohio smoke events originate hundreds of miles away, they can arrive with no local fire on the map at all. Our smoke and air quality tracker guide explains how to tell a nearby source from a distant one drifting in on upper-level wind.

Frequently asked questions about the Ohio fire map