Fire Leads to Origins Game Fair Evacuation

An afternoon fire which broke out in a basement area of the Greater Columbus Convention Center on Wednesday lead to the evacuation of thousands of attendees and exhibitors at the Origins Game Fair. The fire was quickly extinguished but the festivities were paused for more than three hours in order to ensure everyone’s safety. Thankfully, no injuries were reported and damage was minimal so the convention quickly resumed.

The press release:

At 4:20 this afternoon a small fire broke out in the basement of the convention center. In order to fight the fire, local departments shut down the electricity to the building. At that time, the Greater Columbus Convention Center ordered an evacuation of the building. During the evacuation, games were still going strong in both our LARP and RPG areas of the Hyatt. A big thank you to the Game Masters and Attendees for their cooperation. Many GMs have offered to run their events later in the evening.

At 7:30 PM this evening, we were able to restore power and operations at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. If any attendees have questions about their events, please stop by customer service in the concourse.

Thank you again to all of our attendees, it takes a lot more than three hours to slow origins down!

Let the games continue!

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Jeff McAleer

Founder/Editor-in-chief of The Gaming Gang website and host of The Gaming Gang Dispatch and other TGG media, Jeff tackles any and all sorts of games but has a special fondness for strategy, conflict sims, and roleplaying games. Plus, he's certainly never at a loss for an opinion...

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