"Early Saturday morning, at around 4:30am (local time), a fire alarm triggered chaos at a five-star hotel in Chicago, where several Bangladeshi and Indian artistes were staying. The alarm, which persisted for 20 minutes, caused widespread panic as guests scrambled to evacuate their rooms," recounted acclaimed Bangladeshi actor Chanchal Chowdhury.

Chanchal, who was attending the North American Bengali Conference with singer Adity Mohsin, recounted the incident. "The fire alarm went off in every room. However, we were eventually told someone might have smoked in their room. Then again, when we heard the alarm, we, a large team of artistes from Kolkata and Dhaka, rushed out with just our passports, leaving our luggage behind," Chanchal told the media.

The artistes were residing at the Hyatt Regency Hotel for the 44th edition of the conference, which took place from July 4 to 6. Indian artistes present included Swastika Mukherjee, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Srabanti Chattopadhyay, Sohini Sarkar, Sauraseni Maitra, Ambarish Bhattacharya, Arjun Chakrabarty, Anirban Bhattacharya, Tanushree Chakraborty, Kaushik Ganguly, Ujaan Ganguly, Sudeshna Roy, Arindam Sil, and the members of the bands Fossils and Somlata and The Aces.

Chanchal further explained, "It was a technical issue, not an actual fire. Usually, smoking in the hotel triggers the alarm. At that late hour, there was no one at the reception to assist us. Once the alarm stopped, we all returned to our rooms via the stairs."

Nonetheless, the sudden alarm set off caused several people to panic — Arindam Sil shared with the Indian media that he felt the need to hurry down from the fifth floor without wearing warm clothes, along with Srabanti Chattopadhyay and Sohini Sarkar, who also ran to safety in their nightwear.

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