San Diego  October 25, 2007

Alliant International University Staff Member Ginger Hovenic Survives Searing Experience at the Center of Witch Fire

“I was caught and all I could do for three days was to watch the houses burning around me,” Ginger Hovenic rasps, her voice still hoarse from smoke. “The heat was so intense that the atomic clock showed a temperature of 106. You could feel the moisture being sucked out of the plants. I watched grass turn from green to brown in just 30 seconds. “

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Dr. Ginger Hovenic, Alliant Associate Vice President for Corporations, Business and Government

Dr. Ginger Hovenic, Associate Vice President for Corporations, Business and Government at Alliant International University, lives in Rancho Bernardo, an area that has been devastated by the San Diego Witch Fire. To date, that fire has burned about 196,420 acres in northern San Diego County destroying 645 homes and 100 commercial properties. Hovenic’s neighborhood was evacuated, but she and her husband stayed behind, continuously circling their property, on the lookout for possible encroaching flames.

Hovenic watched in horror as events unfolded around her. Her hilltop home was left miraculously unscathed but it afforded an all-too-clear view of the 60 homes that were burned around it.  “All we could do was to watch the homes around us burning for three days, and there was absolutely nothing we could do, “ she recalls. “Those homes burned completely. There was nothing left, not a partial wall or twig, only foundations.”

Hovenic’s electricity went out on Sunday evening, leaving her in the dark, which gave her an eerily clear view of the fires. There was no refrigerator, no TV, no radio. “We ate crackers and peanut butter because the food had all spoiled, and the only contact I had with the outside world for four days was my cell phone,” says Hovenic. The only people Hovenic and her husband saw were 16 armed members of the National Guard patrolling the neighborhood with rifles to prevent looting. And then a neighbor, a man who had hopped a fence to sneak back into the evacuated area, came upon her and asked for a ride to his house. She obliged -- and drove the man to an empty lot where his house had once stood.

Cut off, Hovenic was unaware of the evacuation of the Scripps Ranch Campus where she works. Students were moved from campus housing on Monday, spending the night at QualComm stadium and returning mid-day Tuesday. The campus reopened Wednesday to enable staff members to prepare for the resumption of classes next Monday – and to help those who suffered losses in the firestorm. Alliant has created an online Fire Messages Page, a type of craigslist for Alliant faculty, students and staff; it is filled with postings of well-wishes, available sleeping spots and updates.

Hovenic  is just catching up with her colleagues, two of them Rancho Bernardo neighbors who lost their homes. One is Associate Professor David Diamond of Alliant’s California School of Professional Psychology, who wrote this message for the Fire Messages page: “I have just learned that my house in Rancho Bernardo is confirmed as destroyed, as are those of several friends. My good wishes and caring thoughts to any others who might be in the same situation, or who are still uncertain.”

Hovenic , an alumnus of United States International University (USIU), one of two universities that merged to form Alliant International University in 2001, now works for Alliant. Recently, she and other staff received a small promotional gift from the University. “I was never so glad to have gotten a gift in my whole life!” she laughs. She recalls that when the Alliant president’s office gave alumni, staff and faculty a portable phone recharger embossed with the Alliant logo, a number of people didn’t know what the device was and laughed and joked about it. “That charger was the only thing that kept my cell phone going, and that was my only contact with the outside world!” she says. “I’m really, really grateful!”

Turning somber, her voice choked with emotion, she says, “The firefighters were heroic. Amazing. We can’t possibly thank them enough. There’s no way we would have survived without them.”

Alliant’s Scripps Ranch Campus – the one for which Hovenic is raising funds – owes an equal debt to San Diego firefighters. The campus not only survived the Witch Fire which passed within about 2 miles this week, it also miraculously escaped the 2001 Cedar Fire. The Cedar Fire burned right to the edge of the campus and was beaten back by firefighters who stayed on campus round the clock, sleeping in the student dormitories in shifts.

Oddly, one of the few calls Hovenic was able to receive during her ordeal came from an Alliant alumnus in Sri Lanka. Hovenic has been meeting with the man to discuss a possible gift to the University, and he phoned in the midst of the firestorm to say he was praying for her and her family.
 
“The loss is horrible,” says Hovenic. “All these beautiful homes are just gone.  And the landscaping too. All the beautiful trees and flowers. You’d think there would at least be a stick left. Something!  But there’s nothing left –nothing at all.”