We arrived early this morning with a rental truck at the Peoria St. building. We were hoping to recover as much of our inventory as possible on the promise we would have an hour to remove what we could. The fire marshal and his investigators were still at work in the building and needed additional time.

Residents had fled the fire with little or no time to collect their valuables let alone anything of substance. The two fatalities were an elderly couple who had been residents for over twenty years. Since the hallways on the top three floors of the building were filled with flame, most residents had to leave the building through their windows.

A two year old child was dropped from one of the upper floors into the arms of a bystander. A young women jumped from the fourth floor to the parking lot below, breaking both ankles and her back. Most of the 25 injuries came from falls to the ground despite warnings from the firemen present that ladders were close.

Later in the day, residents were permitted ten minutes to return to rooms that were not totally destroyed. Arthur and Jason had only a few minutes to pick up IDs, valuables, records and computer files. In the brief time allotted, they were allowed look into the HMS storage area. The news is better than we hoped. There was no standing water or heavy smoke present. It appears that most of the Total War material is intact though no through closer inspections were permitted.

We have no clear idea of when we will have access again to the inventory. The building is still a crime scene, though fire and police have gone silent on the individual taken into custody. Insurance investigators have not yet had a chance to look at the interior of the building. I’m sure we will be notified of when we can return and begin recovering our material and we will let you know as soon as we do. Jason and Arthur are without living accommodations and that will be a priority for the next few days.

A fire broke out at the Fitz Apartments here in Aurora, Colorado. Two of
our residents died and as many as 25 were injured
fleeing what was reported to be arson. Jason Long, our German OB
researcher, escaped through a window. Arthur Goodwin, a principal in
the company was working with Gar at his house in central Denver. Neither
of them were injured but the company may be affected.

Our inventory of games and Total War components were apparently not
directly touched by the fire but smoke and water reached the ground
level, where our material is stored. While Arthur and I arrived by
11:30pm, no one was allowed in the building. I reached an arson
investigator with the Aurora Fire Department who explained that there is
water and smoke in the storage area but could give us no further
details. We may be given limited access shortly to access the damage.

Since the building is a crime scene and a suspect has been taken into
custody, renters may not remove material at this time. The damage to
the building is extensive enough that the residents and renters will not
be able to remain there. We will update you as soon as we have more
information. We are deeply saddened by the deaths and injuries. Aurora
has had more tragedy than anyone could expect. We will not know the
extent, if any, of impact on HMS until we can access the inventory.

We will start sending sample again as soon as possible. One of the many
reports of the fire can be found at:

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/31336684/detail.html

We have received a possible print slot from the original printer. The start date is for August 29th with the same 5-8 days of print time. I am very disappointed in these dates and followed up with calls to their office. They felt the best they could do was to break up the package and offered to print the charts beginning August 21st and have it done by the 24th.

We had sent requests for bid on our print jobs to 22 printers late last week after the talks with the original printer. We have received 10 responses. While I had asked for print slots in each request, only 5 printers actually gave dates they could begin printing. While all of the 10 responses were higher in cost than the original shop, several were close enough to the original bid to consider. The best looking bid at this point can begin printing on August 20th and would finish on or before the 30th.

I will be calling each of the responding print shops for clarification on dates, costs and guarantees. I hope we can get something better but if the August 20th date holds up, we will go with that one. For those of you who remember the disaster with the Wavell’s War maps, you can imagine that we put a high value on guarantees or reprint policy. We have had several offers from friends of out of state printers who could probably do a fine job, but if something went wrong, we do not have real recourse at a distance.

We will put up the first of the samples I mentioned late today or tomorrow. This will be the UIC or Unit Identification Chart that has been requested by a number of callers. This will be followed by charts and tables every day or two as we move to a print date.

We received a message from the original printer that they will send new
print dates tomorrow. I have received 6 e-mail replies from the 22
requests for bids that we put out on Friday. We will wait for the bids
mailed today to come in and then check all of them against the new print
slot and cost from the original printer. We will give updates as we
have them.
I was reminded that folks would like to see the samples we promised and
I will send more of these tomorrow.

I had a brief meeting with the printer sales staff late this afternoon. Apparently a number of staff have been given time off due to the recent death of a former employee who was well known and that a great deal of overtime had been accumulated. It was apparently not connected to the recent Aurora Colorado tragedy. The staff I met with were not immediately able to give me a new printing schedule. They were sincerely apologetic and promised to let me know as soon as possible. While I did not doubt their sincerity, after I returned, we decided to put out the printing work for bid. We will keep you informed of progress.