Plenty of pizza for refugees in Poway

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Poway:

An ‘extremely active’ fire was bearing down on the city from Lake Poway, and an official said deputies were hurrying to get residents out of the High Valley area, now considered at great risk.

City workers were hustling in and out of the City Hall lobby loading stacks of pizzas and bins of salad into vans to take to the city’s two evacuation centers -- one at the local community center, and the other at the Boys & Girls Club. ‘It’s approaching dinner time,’ explained Liz Dean, a city management analyst who evacuated her own family to San Diego earlier in the day, then returned to work, where she juggled boxes of food to take to the evacuees.

Poway began its evacuation of two-thirds of the city at about 4 a.m., said Jennifer Lewis, the city’s public information officer. About 51,000 people live in Poway, whose largest employer is a huge Geico facility. About 7,000 homes had so far been evacuated, she said.

The number of people in the city’s shelters peaked at about 800 in the early afternoon, prompting officials to send out pleas discouraging any more evacuees from coming to Poway, despite supplies brought in from Wal-Mart and Costco. But the shelters have since emptied out, and with only 600 people for dinner, Poway was once again welcoming refugees.

Not a single resident had to be prodded to leave, Lewis said. ‘People have been great. Not one person was evacuated by force. Not one,’ she said. ‘They have been through this before, and they take it very seriously.’

Poway command information is at (858) 679-4301.

-- Jill Leovy