Village of Tantallon loses its hotel to fire

Somewhere in Saskatchewan, there are two photographs that show how dramatically the landscape of Tantallon changed overnight.

The Valley View Hotel in the small village — located about 225 kilometres east of Regina — was destroyed by fire early Thursday.

“When we went back down there to meet up with the investigator (from the office of the provincial fire commissioner), there was a group that had been (at the hotel) for supper last night and they happened to take a picture just outside the building,” Owen Wilson, the chief of the Rocanville Fire Department, said Thursday afternoon.

“Today, after everything had happened, they stood in the same spot and took the same picture with a little bit different background.”

Wilson said he and his department got a call at 2:20 a.m., that the tin-covered hotel in the village of about 90 people was on fire. The members of Rocanville’s volunteer fire department hit the road immediately for Tantallon, but the drive takes between 20 and 25 minutes.

By the time they arrived, the fire had taken its toll.

“The building was too far gone to really save,” Wilson said. “(At that point) it’s mostly just trying to preserve buildings around it.

“There’s an open field across the road from where the bar is, so we were trying to make sure that there wasn’t a grass fire – (to ensure there wasn’t) another Biggar situation there.”

A massive grass fire has been burning near Biggar since Monday.

Wilson said the fire department’s dispatcher had told him there wasn’t anybody in the hotel, but the chief’s first step after arriving on the scene was to check with the owner to make sure that the building was indeed empty.

“After that, (the job) is basically just spray water and hope for the best …,” Wilson said. “When you pull up and you see a local establishment up in flames like that, it’s a little heartbreaking. You just do what you can to preserve what you can.”

Wilson estimated the Rocanville firefighters spent “six or seven hours” putting out hotspots in the hotel, which he noted was a total loss. The investigator from the fire commissioner’s office looked through the rubble Thursday and couldn’t determine a cause of the fire.

Wilson said the Valley View Hotel regularly held wing nights and steak nights and was a popular spot for folks from around the area.

“It was just kind of the central hub of a small town,” he said. “Members of all the surrounding communities met there too. It’s going to be a big hit for Tantallon.”

— With files from 980 CJME’s Jessie Anton