Weather hindering open burns on Hilton Head

Nearly half of the 2015 dates Hilton Head Island residents were allowed to burn yard trash were rescheduled because of inclement weather.

Wind and rain forced the Hilton Head Island Fire & Rescue Division to schedule 10 make-up dates for the burning of yard waste in 2015, the first full year of its partial ban on open burns.

Only 24 burn dates are allowed annually under the ordinance adopted in April 2014, which regulates when and how residents can burn the sticks, branches and leaves that accumulate in their yards. Like clockwork, many of the weekends designated for burning were preceded by heavy rains, complicating the set schedule.

“I think some people would like more days and more freedom, but this is the ordinance,” said Hilton Head’s fire chief Brad Tadlock. “I’ve tried to be flexible in the aspect of, when I can, allowing another day to burn” after the island sees poor weather.

The law is a scaled-back version of the full ban the town attempted in November 2013, much to the chagrin of residents who said they and their families had used open burns for decades to keep their yards clean.

Some, like Elnora Aiken of Aiken Road, say they’re still not happy with the town’s law and wish there were more days available to burn.

Aiken keeps a copy of this year’s burn schedule posted inside her home, though she doesn’t burn her yard waste these days because she doesn’t have a drum or wire basket to hold the debris.

The town requires that fires not contained by a pit or barrel be 25 to 50 feet away from any structure, depending on the size of the fire, so Aiken will need a container to burn with ease.

For now, when she can afford it, Aiken rakes her leaves, bags them up and pays someone to transport them to the dump. But she can barely keep up with the trees that stretch over her property, covering the ground with new leaves every day.

And in between clean-ups, she has to be careful walking through the mess, which attracts snakes.

“I know time brings on changes, but ... you’ve got to think about everybody — the little people, the middle people and the big people,” she said. “You’ve got to think about what they can afford and what they can’t afford.”

Overall, Tadlock says enforcement of the ordinance has gone smoothly, and the town and residents alike have adapted well to the rules.

It only issued 22 citations during the year, down from 28 in 2014.

The fire division also issued fewer warnings in 2015 — just four compared to 36 in 2014 — and received just 22 complaints

Tadlock says that’s a relatively small number considering nearly 250 people hold permits to burn lawn debris, and they held 372 registered burns in 2015.

“Over time, people have come to understand it, come to comply with it and more or less adjusted to what the schedule is,” he said.

To enforce the ordinance, fire units visited the homes of nearly all the permit holders on the days they registered to burn and followed up on complaints of black smoke and strange smells, which suggest people are burning rubber and household trash along with fallen tree limbs and leaves.

The town has also surveyed permit holders to see how they liked the schedule for yard waste burns, and learned few people were using the burn dates scheduled for Fridays and Mondays.

All 2016 dates are now scheduled either on two Saturdays in a month or one full weekend.

For example, the dates next month, April 2 and 23, are both Saturdays. In May, the burn dates fall on the second Saturday and Sunday of the month, May 14 and 15. The full calendar is available on the town’s website.

This story was originally published March 9, 2016 at 2:10 PM with the headline "Weather hindering open burns on Hilton Head."