AURORA | Aurora officials are directing people to the city’s website for donations to the victims of the July 20 shooting in order to prevent fraud.

Mayor Steve Hogan said in a speech to community leaders Aug. 3 that it’s important for the people affected by the events of July 20 to get the help they need to cope with the tragedy.

“It’s still very raw and still very personal,” he told a group of more than 250 people that included local lawmakers, business and neighborhood leaders and mental health professionals at the “community healing” meeting.

Hogan and other city officials are encouraging people to band together as a community and help each other out in the wake of the shooting.

“We have to take the time and we have to find a way to help continue to make this big 335,000-citizen family heal,” Hogan said.

The city has started a web page at auroragov.org specifically dedicated to resources for those affected, and city officials will add to it regularly. It currently features information about donations and links to organizations including the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance, Aurora Mental Health Center. The website will soon feature a calendar where people can get information about upcoming benefits and fundraisers for victims’ families.

Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said the city’s Victim Services Unit has six full-time staff and 50 volunteers to help victims, and they’ve made contact with all 70 families of the victims.

Between 1,100 and 1,300 people in the Century Aurora 16 multiplex at the time of the shooting, Oates said at the meeting, and Aurora police officers are trying to make contact with those people.

“We still want to see them, because we never know what they saw,” Oates said.

In a video presentation to the group, Lakewood-based psychologist John Nicoletti said a tragedy of this magnitude is comparable to the 1999 Columbine shootings and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“It shatters our comfort zone and shatters our assumptions about the world,” he said. People react to violence or trauma in different ways, and some people “are afraid to have fun again,” he said.

Nicoletti encourages people to talk about the tragedy with either mental health professionals or friends and family, and write about their feelings if they are hesitant to talk to anyone.

He said it’s important to remind people that it takes some people longer to recover from a traumatic experience than others, depending on a person’s resiliency, how many traumas they’ve experienced, and how much time they spend trying to recover.

In many ways, the community has already come together to help each other out, said Nicoletti.

“Aurora is a very resilient community,” he said. “Everybody from the police department to mental health organizations, community organizations and businesses jumped in right away. That tells you this community is going to rise again, this community is going to heal and pull together.”

Kevin Hougen, president of the Aurora Chamber of Commerce, said several people and organizations have already stepped up to help.

Frontier Airlines paid for friends and family of victims to attend out-of-state funerals and Quality 1st Plumbing donated food to residents in homes whose power was shut off during the investigation of the alleged shooter’s apartment, Hougen said.

In the break-out sessions after the Aug. 3 meeting, community organizations talked about continuing to provide services long after the initial shock wears off.

Hougen said some business owners in his small group talked about events they’ll host in the coming weeks to raise money for the victims.

“It was really reassuring to get support from the business community about what we can do,” he said.

Several state lawmakers attended the event including state Reps. Rhonda Fields and Nancy Todd and state Sen. Morgan Carroll.