It Took Years to Build Business; but in a Flash It Was Gone : Encino: Community support helps a merchant overcome the numbness. Michael Bluestein calls the fire ‘an obstacle, but it’s not closing the door.’

For six years Michael Bluestein worked days, nights and weekends to build a printing business that was destroyed overnight.

“I’m in such a fog,” Bluestein, 41, of Sherman Oaks said Wednesday morning as he gazed at smoke rising from his shop. “I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not even sure I know who I am at this moment.”

As he showered and listened to the radio at 5:30 a.m., Bluestein learned that a fire had swept through the Ventura Boulevard mini-mall that housed his business, doctors’ offices and mom-and-pop shops.

Like many of his neighbors, Bluestein had struggled for years to make his store, a franchise of PIP Printing, a success. He raced there from home in time to see it burning.

“It was all in flames,” he said of the mall. “There was a wall of fire, and flames were going up out of the ceiling.”

Bluestein said he later glanced at his shop and concluded that it was “a goner.”

He had changed locations in the mall six weeks ago, spending about $20,000 to remodel the new store area, he said. He estimated that equipment worth $250,000, including printing presses and high-speed duplicating machines, was destroyed.

Bluestein said he believed that insurance would cover the costs of the equipment as well as reimburse him for lost business, lost income and the salaries of himself and his five employees.

That news from his insurance agent, and additional offers of help throughout the day, had renewed Bluestein’s hope by early evening.

Many of his clients, he said, had come by the scene of the fire to express their sympathies and offer help. One of them gave him an office to use with a secretary, phone and fax machine, he said. Also, members of the Encino Chamber of Commerce, of which he is a board member, showered him with support.

“Encino’s a real small community,” Bluestein said. “We’re a real close-knit group, who all work together.”

He said the PIP corporate office also had offered to help him make “lemons into lemonade” and assist him in setting up a new business. He hopes to reopen at another spot in Encino within 30 days.

“I realized throughout the day that I’m getting a lot of support and the numbness is starting to wear off,” he said. “This is definitely an obstacle, but it’s not closing the door.”