------------------------------------------------------ 

Let me channel the spirit of my grandfather and say, "Let this be a lesson to you."

It might seem callous to make a learning experience of the Southern California fires, especially when so many are still finding their homes — and lives — in charred ruins. But San Joaquin County residents should pay very close attention to what’s happening down south, because a similar debilitating disaster could happen in our backyard.

The folks who live in those chaparral-covered hills in San Diego didn’t deserve to lose their homes and lives. My heart truly goes out to them. (Donations can be sent to the American Red Cross and various other relief organizations.)

Still, there’s no denying those housing developments are smack in the middle of nature’s tinderbox. Southern California is prone to drought, and the native plant species count on fire to reproduce. Annual Santa Ana winds have fanned flames in SoCal’s box canyons and mountains for centuries. No number of firefighters can wholly contain the result when those factors conspire.

It doesn’t matter if the firestorms were caused by nature, a careless camper, homegrown arsonists or — as Fox News postulated Wednesday — an al-Qaida terrorist. The blazes wreaked havoc on Southland neighborhoods because they were built in an area prone to fire.

The exact situation in San Diego and Los Angeles isn’t likely to repeat in San Joaquin County. But many in the valley have chosen an equally temperamental, and potentially destructive, neighbor — the Delta.

We’ve seen the levees break, fields flood and homes lost time and again. We know it’s a dangerous place to live. We know all that separates many people from a wall of water is a crumbling pile of dirt that’s sometimes more than a century old.

But that hasn’t stopped many communities from tempting fate. Just in the past decade, Lathrop’s expanded and put thousands of homes in a historic floodplain west of Interstate 5, and Weston Ranch was founded at the confluence of San Joaquin River and French Camp Slough.

It’s old news, but the lesson doesn’t seem to sink in.

As predictable as the sun rising in the east, we’ve seen neighborhoods built in forests burn (Lake Tahoe and the Angora Fire), we’ve seen cities surrounded by levees and water drown (New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina), and we’ve seen regions built on fault lines crumble (the Bay Area and the Loma Prieta earthquake).

We know there’s no place that’s 100 percent safe to live in the U.S. — there’s a disaster for every region. Yet we seem to build new homes where we increase, rather than decrease, that danger.

Maybe it’s the indominatable spirit of humanity that spurs us on. (Ignorance is another possibility.) Regardless, it shows a lack of respect for forces that are much more powerful than levees and firebreaks. While we have the ability to cut down forests, pollute the air, drive species to extinction and alter the global climate, the environment has the ability to hit us where it hurts, no matter how good our engineering.

These fires are a reminder that we would be wise to respect the fragility and ferocity of Mother Nature. And that, in the ongoing battle between humans and the world, the safe money’s on the world.

Play ball in Tracy?

A Tracy Press quick hit the other day suggested — tongue in cheek — that the Oakland A’s relocate to Tracy, since they seem to be tired of their Bay Area digs.

But maybe it’s not so crazy.

The city could offer the site of the Schulte Road sports park for the stadium. Pacific Gas & Electric Co., who has some pipes of questionable integrity running under the site, could become the stadium sponsor.

While PG&E Park wouldn’t have a giant Coke bottle or McCovey Cove, like its counterpart in San Francisco, it could have a towering water tank and jets of natural gas (provided, of course, by PG&E’s pipes) that would burst into flame after a home run.

We could even rename the team, something that sounds similar to the old Oakland mascot but that connects the team to its new home. Might I suggest the Tracy Haze?

The city could entice new businesses to surround the 40,000-seat stadium, maybe even attach a few youth sports fields to the private-funded ballpark.

And a new stadium would give officials perfect incentive to extend BART to Tracy — even to Stockton and Modesto.

Maybe, just maybe.

 • Share your thoughts with Jon at jmendelson@tracypress.com, or visit his blog at www.jmendelson05.blogspot.com.