Sunday, January 21, 2007

Drunk man rescued from chimney

A drunk Toronto man who spent five freezing hours in a stranger’s chimney Thursday morning was simply trying to enter the home after no one answered his knocks at the front door.

The 35-year-old man left his friend’s Muskoka Lakes cottage in the middle of the night to “relieve himself,” Ontario Provincial Police said.

Stumbling back through the dark, he unknowingly ended up at an empty neighbouring cottage. Imagine his surprise, then, when he found the door locked and no one answering his knocks.

“Upset and determined to get in, he climbed onto the roof and slid down the chimney, the wrong chimney,” Bracebridge OPP said.

On his way down, the inebriated man became stuck at the bottom of the chimney, where he spent about five hours in freezing conditions before contractors working near the cottage heard his cries for help shortly after 9 a.m.

After climbing on the roof and finding the victim stuck with his arms above his head, the workers lowered a rope down the flue and managed to pull the freezing man out.

This will likely go down in the history books as “one of the strangest occurrences Bracebridge OPP officers, Township of Muskoka Lakes firefighters and paramedics have ever attended,” OPP said.

No comments: