The Aurora Ice Hotel received verbal approval from the Alaska State Fire Marshall to open as an ice hotel. The news was met at Chena Hot Springs Resort with relief and excitement as the United States� only ice hotel continued construction.

A meeting yesterday by a group of credentialed engineers, architects, and seasoned ice sculptors from the private, public and university sectors, shared their expertise with the Alaska State Fire Marshall, Gary Powell, allaying his concerns for the structural safety of the building. The experts educated and convinced the Fire Marshall that it is safe to stay inside the Aurora Ice Hotel this winter and Chena Hot Springs Resort agreed to monitor the structural integrity of the building as the season progresses and to meet certain fire codes.

Owner Bernie Karl says, �Now there is no need to refer to the Aurora Ice Hotel as a �project� or �interactive ice sculpture�, it is back to being a legitimate ice hotel! We knew we had built a solid building but it was hard to prove it. I was tempted to drive my D-8 Cat up on top of it to prove how sound it was. Now I don�t have to.�

�It was exciting to listen to all the �experts� talk about the properties of ice and snow, its strength and its characteristics,� says Karl. Even though ice palaces have been around for nearly 200 years that we know about and Eskimos have lived in igloos for who knows how long, there has been little definitive material written about the construction and subsequent disintegration of ice buildings, and certainly there hasn�t been any codes written for building such structures. So Chena Hot Springs Resort is truly �writing the book� on ice building.

Powell is willing to see the Aurora Ice Hotel as an experiment, and as such, students of ice and snow and students of engineering will be invited to study and learn from it.

Chena Hot Springs Resort has invited the University of Alaska�s renown School of Engineering to help create monitoring methods to assure all concerned of the safety of the building. Each room will include a smoke detector and a fire extinguisher as part of the agreement. Don�t laugh; something could foreseeably catch on fire and rather than have someone throw an ice sculpture on it to put it out, the fire extinguisher would be a quicker, easier way to extinguish it.

Karl credits Jim Clark, chief of staff for Governor Murkowski, for getting this situation cleared up in a hurry. �Jim Clark put the �common� back in common sense and I want to congratulate the Governor and his staff for their vision and effort into helping make the Aurora Ice Hotel a reality and a shining star in Alaska�s tourism.�

Everyone at the meeting agreed that the goal was to open the Aurora Ice Hotel and assure the public that it was safe to be inside and to stay inside. That has been accomplished.

There will be an official statement from the Fire Marshall�s office later this week. Until then, Chena Hot Springs Resort encourages people to pack their bags and get ready to experience the beauty of this building. Watch for photos of the construction on the website at www.chenahotsprings.com.

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For more information: Brenda Hewitt (907) 488-1505 Brenda_Hewitt@yahoo.com