Mountain House — California’s newest city in western San Joaquin County near where the valley floor gives way to the base of the foothills of the Diablo Range — is not on the map.

Nor are Tracy, Lathrop, Manteca, or Ripon for that matter.

The map is Cal Fire’s rating of fire hazard severity of areas under their jurisdiction.

Such maps, for the most part, do not exist for other areas of the state.

State law requires Cal Fire to identify areas by the severity of fire hazard.

Such designations are based on slope, fuel in terms of vegetation, and “fire weather”.

Fire weather is a catchall for wind, low humidity, and heat.

The three zones are very high, high, and moderate.

There is a complete ring of “very high” fire risk zones encircling the Great Central Valley from Bakersfield to Redding.

Generally, it is between 200 or so feet in the base of foothills up around 2,500 plus feet.

Because a city is not within such designated Cal Fire zones doesn’t mean it isn’t vulnerable to a fast moving fire sweeping through neighborhoods on red flag days the National Weather Service posts when conditions needed for an inferno exists.

In June of 2008, a grass fire on a windy, low humidity day of high temperatures quickly got out of control. It destroyed or severely damaged more than 30 homes.

Mountain House is just outside of Cal Fire’s Ring of Fire.

As the Corral Fire earlier this year that originated on Livermore Lab property in the Altamont foothills underscored, once fires start burning in a Cal Fire coverage area, they don’t respect boundaries.

The burn scars are still clearly visible to the southwest of Manteca that show how it traveled down to the valley floor outside of Cal Fire territory.

All it takes is a fire starting in the right place under the right conditions and places like Mountain House are vulnerable.

The same goes for any city near wild land or has areas of sizable dry vegetation and debris,

Manteca and Lathrop are vulnerable to what happened in 2008 in Stockton.

It is why investing tax dollars in making sure a community has a top-notch fire service is just as important in Manteca, Mountain House, Ripon, Tracy, and Lathrop as it is in Paradise.

As far as whether it makes sense where Mountain House is built, the answer is a resounding yes with an asterisk.

More about the asterisk further down.

Mountain House won a “contest” of sorts the Board of Supervisors devised back in the early 1990s.

They wanted to minimize the urbanization of farmland and to direct growth as much as possible into established cities.

But they also understood the market dynamics.

That is why after 20 acre minimum zoning was established in rural areas, they told the development world they would agree to allow the creation of another community in the middle of farming areas in the South County to accommodate future growth driven by commuters spilling over the Altamont Pass.

Three proposals were floated.

One — River Oaks along the Stanislaus River just across the Stanislaus County line from Riverbank — was rejected because it would put a strain on road infrastructure due to its distance from the Altamont Pass.

New Jerusalem south of Tracy along Highway 33 lost out because it was in the heart of prime farmland

That left Mountain House.

The farmland involved was of lower production potential.

The future commute traffic would have minimal impact on major corridors feeding into Interstate 580 at the Alameda County line.

And it was sparsely developed with farming and had only a handful of rural homes.

In another day and age, if you said one day there would be a city of 30,000 where Mountain House is today, you’d be considered an idiot.

If you look at the ongoing war between environmentalists and developers in Southern California, you’d have to wonder whether Mountain House could have been launched today.

Mountain House was semi-lauded by environmentalists back in the 1990s because it avoided prime farmland, didn’t impose on prized or over sensitive ecological systems, and was a planned community.

The SoCal war today is between the need for housing and the potential for wildfires.

Ten major projects aimed at addressing the state’s perennial housing shortage are tied up in lawsuits including the massive 19,333-home Centennial at Tejon Ranch northeast of Los Angeles.

In past decades, protecting the environment, such as the Sierra Club et al’s original main argument against the 15,001-home River Islands at Lathrop, and saving agriculture were the approached used primarily to attack housing development.

Now it’s encroaching on the urban interface with wildland where the potential for massive destructive wildfires exist.

And to be clear, the fire threat has always existed.

But once you start building houses next to and on windswept terrain where the vegetation is dry two thirds of the year, the dynamics are changed.

That includes how a fire is initially attacked.

In areas 30 or so years ago where initial resources tackling wildfires were dedicated almost 100 percent to controlling the blaze, now the game plan requires addressing massive evacuations.

It’s a reality that works to the advantage of wildfires in terms of their potential growth.

Back to that asterisk regarding Mountain House.

It involves the availability of an adequate and secure long-term water supply.

Given the state’s push for more housing, you’d think Sacramento would be more helpful when it comes to Mountain House securing an additional reliable source of water.

That’s especially true since Mountain House in a relatively short time from now will check off another box on Sacramento’s environmental “must list” — access to mass rail transit.

Valley Link, that will initially connect Tracy and then Lathrop to BART in Dublin/Pleasanton, will include a station stop on the edge of Mountain House.

Large scale planned developments such as River Islands and Mountain House are poster projects for getting urbanization right in 21st century California.

No one is saying the state should relax rules or roll over and play dead.

But you’d think they’d find ways to make planned communities that address  the housing shortage in ways that create minimum issues with wildfires and address a wide array of smart planning concerns be as effective as possible.

Water to assure Mountain House growth helps reduce pressure to build in areas that are more susceptible to fire and floods or infringe on sensitive or cherished environments.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com