A fire alarm prompts the evacuation of the entire Baltimore Convention Center, into the muggy heat that was outside. So an estimated 30,000 people walked out of the center. Attendees waited for close to an hour to enter back into the premises.
Otakon Press was quick in dispelling rumors that this incident was not as serious as what rumors were circulating around, like a kitchen fire as I believed. I spoke with Otakon Press and got this quote from Alyce Wilson, “Information given is that it was a false alarm.”
Everything about this evacuation, was done pretty smoothly. The impact of this evacuation was not as big as anyone would think. Why am I even reporting about this, when I wasn’t at the scene, to showcase Jon’s images that’s what. I got some images from height of the evacuation. There are more images, that still needs to be sorted through. So for a convention as this, one can see the scale of how much people were at the scene.
Panels were delayer/restarted and the dealer room hours were extended. On Sunday, I went and spoke with some dealers, and they did mention that some potential business was probably lost, but if the customer was a serious buyer, then they stopped by. After the convention center opened up again, there was a slight surge in business for dealers before attendees realized that the hours were slightly extended.
Did I jump around a bit? For this article, probably – but as far as convention memories, this is probably going to be in the minds of convention attendees. Something should always happen at a convention other than the scheduled convention event, so for random Otakon 2010 moments, this is a story to be remembered.
There are some more images on Anime Diet’s Flickr.
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