Fireworks can be a lot of fun, but the rules surrounding them can be confusing. The City of Houston uses its authority under the fire code to enforce a citywide fireworks ban, which means, for the most part, it’s illegal to set off fireworks around here.

That might be a bummer for some people, but there’s a bright side: unincorporated Harris County does not have a ban, as long as you are not within 600 feet of a hospital, gas station, fireworks stand, school, church, or shooting them out of a moving vehicle.

For all of those points of interest, I customized a dataset from Geonames. I also requested the boundaries of unincorporated Harris County from the Harris County GIS team. Then I built the map below.

This map highlights unincorporated Harris County in green and prohibited locations in red. The radius of each prohibited location marker is 500 meters. This covers the location itself, and hopefully a few feet in any direction.

This map isn’t a substitute for common sense and it’s not giving you legal advice. It’s only a starting point to get smart before you set things on fire.

Please be responsible with your fireworks. Review these safety instructions from the Houston Fire Department and these fireworks facts from the Harris County Fire Marshall.