News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Livingston Fire Chief Rocky Dial said he wants to implement city burn permits, along with other layers of protection.
Dial presented a change to open burn ordinances to the board of aldermen on Monday, however no action was taken. Dial said he wants to add local oversight because he has seen what happens when people only go through the state for permits.
“Probably about a year ago we had a guy get a permit to burn a brush pile and it turns out it was two mobile homes that were in disrepair that he had burnt,” Dial said. “It burned a city gas line and caught the gas line on fire.”
Dial said he and the city attorney have used permit models from MTAS. Dial said he took another step, reaching out to Cookeville, Smithville and Crossville about their city burn permits.
He said the only difference between their permits and what Dial wants to add is the ability to inspect burn sites before a resident starts.
“To make sure that they aren’t burning anything that they weren’t supposed to be burning,” Dial said. “That was the only difference, that we wanted to verify what they would be burning but ours is pretty much modeled by MTAS.”
Dial said this would cut down on false calls where people think there’s a fire, along with trying to eliminate trash burns. Dial said he intends to meet with the aldermen again to see what tweaks can be made to get the ordinance change to become policy.
“See what their concerns are and try to figure out a happy medium,” Dial said. “Between their concerns and my concerns and get us something we can put in place to make it safer. We don’t want people burning out right next to their house and we’ve had that happen where people want to burn a brush pile that was 15 feet from their house. We just want to try and make it safer for everybody.”
