TechniCom and CAD-Portal.com offices destroyed by fire

By Ray Kurland, Editor

There I was -- vacationing in Cape Cod, MA with my family with only two days left on the vacation rental house when I received an early morning call on 28 August that there was a major fire in my office in New Jersey during the night. Fortunately it had occurred after hours, first being detected at about 0200. No one was hurt, but evidently the damage was considerable. After spending several hours on the phone trying to ascertain the damage I decided to hurriedly pack the car and return home that night – a 290 mile trip.

Arriving at my office the next morning I was shocked at the loss. A fire had started in an adjacent planter to the building and ran up the side of the building, igniting the roof and ceiling. Much of the roof had caved in and the suspended ceiling as well. What the fire did not directly destroy, the water from the sprinkler system and the fire hoses did. Basically every piece of electronic equipment and all paperwork was unsalvageable. You can view pictures of the damage by going to the TechniCom site (picture no longer available) for the link.

Fortunately I had been pretty rigorous about backing up the data every two weeks and keeping it off-site. Even then some data managed to escape the backup. We seemed to have lost subscriptions to this newsletter between 1 Aug 2003 and 31 Aug 2003. If someone you know subscribed during that time, please ask them to resubscribe.

Most of the destruction was to things that can be replaced, fortunately not to any persons.

I learned that I had a pretty good office insurance policy that covered most of the replaceable items. Unfortunately some items were irreplaceable such as treasured mementos, pictures, and some of my diplomas. One item damaged was a treasured presentation to me by James Lovell, the commander of the Apollo 13 space mission, personally autographed and entitled “Earthrise,” a wonderful picture of our beautiful Earth, rising from the back of the moon.

Here are some lessons I learned from the fire:

Needless to say, our next issue will be a few days late.

In the meantime, please take the time to visit with our advertisers. They enable us to keep the issues coming.