Midwest Furfest Poison Gas Attack

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Overview

2014 Midwest Furfest Poison Gas Leak was a chlorine gas attack that took place at the Hyatt hotel in Rosemont, Illinois, where the 15th annual furry fan convention was being held for the weekend. The attack sent 19 people to the hospital and made headlines the following day.

Background

At around 12:40 a.m. on December 7th, 2014, the Hyatt hotel in the suburban town of Rosemont, Illinois, was evacuated after a high level of chlorine gas was detected on the ninth floor of the building. According to the Rosemont Police Department, the nature of the incident seemed to be an "intentional act," as the source of the gas was subsequently identified as a pile of powdered chlorine placed in a stairwell on the ninth floor (shown below).

As a result of the incident, 19 guests who were staying at the hotel, including at least a dozen of Furfest attendees, were transported to hospitals nearby for treatment of toxic gas inhalation, and the rest of the occupants were allowed back into the building around 4:20 a.m. after the decontamination was completed.

Notable Developments

At 1:29 a.m. (ET), less than an hour after the evacuation procedures began, the organizers of the Midwest Furfest tweeted a brief statement on the developing situation via its official Twitter account.^[13]

Later that afternoon, the organizers released an official statement via its website^[17], assuring its attendees that the convention events for the day would be running on a full, normal programming schedule.

Excerpt from furfest.org:

As we wake up today we want to continue to provide the best possible convention that we can, despite the trying circumstances. The convention will be running on a full normal programming schedule today. We ask you to continue to be patient, and remember that the volunteers who make Midwest FurFest happen intend to give 110% to make sure that the fun, friendship, and good times of Midwest FurFest 2014 overshadow last night’s unfortunate incident. To dispel rumors: Because this was an unforeseen possibly criminal act, Midwest FurFest will not be offering refunds, nor will the Hyatt Regency O’Hare be comping any rooms.

News Media Coverage

By 10:00 a.m. (ET) on December 7th, the gas leak evacuation at the Hyatt hotel was reported on by several local TV news affiliates and newspapers, including ABC7Chicago^[14], NBC Chicago^[1] and the Chicago Tribune^[6], followed by a number of online news sites and internet culture blogs, such as The Daily Mail^[16], Gawker^[4], The Escapist^[9] and Kotaku Australia.^[10] Throughout the day, the story continued to circulate among the furry communities on the web, along with several news photographs of people standing by outside of the hotel while still dressed in furry costumes.

Online furry fandom resource site Wiki Fur^[5] updated its Midwest Furfest 2014 article with several details of the gas leak incident and convention attendees posted snapshots via Twitter live from the event.