Drunk man rescued from chimney

From the Toronto Star:

January 19, 2007

Tamara Cherry
Staff Reporter
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, police say.

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.

They initially thought someone had fallen into Lake Rousseau, OPP said. “They checked the water, but were surprised to discover the cries were coming from an intoxicated man stuck down the chimney.”

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.

“It’s simply a miracle the victim escaped relatively unscathed without need of medical attention.”

Because the man had no criminal intent in entering the home, no charges will be laid, police said.