Rooftop heroics stubs Chateau fire It must have seemed like something out of Mission Impossible: the Movie, as Whistler firefighters had to rappel from the 10th storey of the Chateau Whistler to put out a fire imbedded in an eighth-storey roof. The fire was reported at 1 a.m., Wednesday. It took 30 firefighters six hours to extinguish the tricky blaze in the new wing of the hotel. Damage is estimated at $5,000-$10,000. "It was in a very difficult location," says Norm Dedeluk, Whistler’s fire chief. Faulty heat tracing is being blamed for the fire. Hotel staff and management are to be congratulated, Dedeluk says, for their co-operation with firefighters and for their fire preparedness. "Hotel staff found the room where we thought we could gain access to the fire," Dedeluk says, but the only way to get to the fire was to attack it from the peak of the Chateau's roof. "They handled the situation well to clear guests from the area," Dedeluk says of hotel staff. Firefighters rappelled to the fire site, ripping open the exterior metal roof to get to the problem. "It wasn't a big fire, but it was a dangerous situation for our firefighters," Dedeluk says.
