The opinions and recount of events expressed in this post are entirely my own and are not reflective of Altonimbus Entertainment d/b/a Kumoricon. Details, including timelines of events, may be incorrect. You are encouraged to utilize multiple sources of information.
Now that I am home from Sakura-Con, I wanted to take some time to discuss what happened over the weekend, particularly Saturday, as multiple people reached out to me over social media to find out what was going on.
First and foremost, I am OK. I was not directly impacted, other than the increased foot traffic to the Exhibits Hall in the Summit Building. To the best of my knowledge, no one else attending Sakura-Con as part of Kumoricon, either as part of Outreach or for networking, were impacted. While I am the Secretary at Kumoricon, this is not an official statement on behalf of Kumoricon. I am aware that some staff who work for Kumoricon were also working for Sakura-Con at the time and may have had to respond to the incidents as part of their duties for Sakura-Con. To the best of my knowledge, everyone is fine.
So, what the heck did happen Saturday at Sakura-Con this year? I was on shift to open the outreach booth for Kumoricon Saturday morning in the Exhibits Hall of the Summit Building, the newer building of the Seattle Convention Center, which is down the block from the original complex. At 9:23 am, I received a message in one of our Discord threads for the weekend that, “there might be a fire at the arch con building.” Shortly after, it was clarified to potentially be the Cheesecake Factory. The Arch Building of the Seattle Convention Center was originally the Washington Convention Center and over time became a series of connected building along Pike Street.
The Cheesecake Factory sits directly below hall 4E of the 800 Pike building, the largest hall in the Arch building. In the case of Sakura-Con, it was home to the Artist Alley, along with hall 4F. Prior to the opening of the Summit Building, it was the exhibits hall for Sakura-Con. At 9:34 am, the thread was updated again to announce Artist Alley was being evacuated. At 9:40 am, the first photo was posted to the thread and showed a considerable amount of smoke visible looking south from the intersection of 8th and Pine. At 9:46 am, a conflicting report was received that the fire might actually be in the parking garage, with another photo sourced from X showing smoke underneath the skybridge and the area where the loading dock and parking garage is. By 9:56 am it was clear Artist Alley would not be able to open as scheduled with another photo from X showing the emergency services response with several fire trucks on scene. At 10:10 am, a screenshot of the official statement from Sakura-Con was posted, announcing that opening Artist Alley would be delayed at least one hour. The rest of Arch and all of Summit would remain open.
At 10:28 am, the thread was updated again to state the Grand Hyatt was being evacuated. The Grand Hyatt is part of the same superstructure, at the north end of the building.
At this point, there was some confusion as to if the Grand Hyatt was being evacuated as part of the same fire or if there was an additional car fire at the Grand Hyatt. It was eventually confirmed that there was no additional fire. The Exhibits Hall opened as scheduled at 10 am, and by Noon it became crowded enough that the cellular networks started to struggle. I believe it was shortly before 3 pm that I started hearing from others at the outreach booth that Artist Alley was going to reopen, but my Discord became completely out of sync by that time. It did reopen around 3 pm and would have extended hours until 9 pm.
By then, I was certainly hopeful it would be the last of the excitement for the day. It wasn’t.
At 1 am on Sunday, it was reported the fire department was back. At 8:25 am, the thread was updated again to note there had been a gas leak that caused another evacuation of the Grand Hyatt. By Sunday afternoon, everything had finally cleared up, and folks were beginning to poke fun at what happened, myself included. If you got here from Google, welcome. I never intended for that post to creep up in results listings nearly as much as it has, but I hope this post offers some context to what happened.
Or, if you’re here wondering what happened Thursday and Friday that caused badge pickup to be a nightmare, the only information I have is that Zebra printers suck. They’re part of the reason we no longer print badges at con for Kumo. Ultimately, Sakura-Con 2025 is going to be remembered for reasons I don’t think anyone would have expected. Thankfully, to the best of my knowledge, no one was hurt as a result of the fire or gas leak, and everyone that was a part of Sakura-Con is safe. I am glad Artist Alley was able to eventually reopen with modified hours. Certainly not ideal, but I don’t think there’s any denying that things could have been worse. No one ever wants a literal fire at a con.
