ON THE TOWN:Fire danger is real: Take proper safety precautions

When I was 12 our family lived in an apartment that bordered on a street. One day, probably around July 4, my brother Stuart asked me to unhook the bedroom window screen and hold it out away from the window.

I did as I was told, leaving a gap of about 18 inches between the window sill and the bottom of the screen.

Stuart took out the second-biggest firecracker I’ve ever seen, sparked the fuse and threw it out the window.

Unfortunately, Stuart was a bad shot. The firecracker bounced off the screen back into the room, landed on our brother Larry’s bed, exploded and set the bed on fire.

True story.

Just recently, a colleague told me that her bed at home caught fire from a candle that fell over.

And in Tustin, two boys just died in a fire in a garage.

All of this is a warning that is particularly relevant as we make our way through this period of dry, windy weather. At this time, it is important for all of us to remember to take extra precautions against the possibility of a fire.

Make sure your chimney’s spark arrestor is in working condition. Watch out for sparks from anything onto anything else. Don’t have any type of flame near where there is a possibility of falling asleep. And above all do not throw your firecrackers out a partially opened window.

In the Gotta Love It Department, there is a small group of people who are thumping their chests and saying “I told you so” over the fact that jailhouse checks over the past few weeks have turned up six criminals eligible for deportation.

The ignorance of these residents is exceeded only by their failure to admit that, in fact, they were the ones who were wrong all along.

The presence and success of a federal immigration agent at Costa Mesa Jail to screen detainees is proof that anyone who supported the mayor’s plan to train Costa Mesa police for immigration checks was way wrong.

You see, everyone who ran for a seat on the City Council in November knew that there were illegal immigrants in Costa Mesa. Every one of them. That was not the issue, and if you need a reminder, you can go back and look at several of these columns in which that point was made quite clear.

The disagreement was not whether illegal immigrants are here but how to handle them. Most of the candidates opposed the mayor’s proposal.

Fortunately, the feds provided the mayor with a clear-thinking proposal that allowed him an exit strategy from the issue that would help him save face.

What the rest of us are smiling about is the knowledge that we, not the mayor’s supporters, were right all along. Eliminating illegal immigrants from the city, you see, is being accomplished without having to train Costa Mesa police officers or divide the community.

In the early stages is a proposal to create new bike paths along a length of flood-control channels. They’re calling it a community trail, and it involves covering the channels with decomposed granite so we can ride on top of it.

The bike path being proposed is about three miles long and would stretch from Baker and Bristol streets almost to Upper Newport Bay.

As someone who tries to ride his bike around the city as much as possible, this is a great idea. And as someone who’d like to see more beautification, this is a great idea because it would turn ugly waterways into attractive bicycle thoroughfares.

And in a twist on another term, the bike path would keep our kids off the street. As anyone on a bike who has tried to navigate Baker Street or Harbor Boulevard knows, that’s a big deal.