DAWSON CITY By Sunday afternoon, the actual cause of last Thursday's fire at the Eldorado Hotel had been determined, an initial value placed on the damages, and work was proceeding on the cleanup.

Trucks were filling up with debris from the second and first floors and heading off to the dump.

'We'll be reopening,' said Karen Jenkins as she surveyed the stricken hotel from the elevated boardwalk outside the Red Feather Saloon.

Jenkins said she and husband Peter, the hotel's long-time owner, feel enormously fortunate to be living in Dawson while going through such a tragedy.

The outpouring of telephone calls, e-mails and personal condolences has, she said, been a tremendous lift to their spirits as they've looked at the damage and considered their options.

She said her husband, Dawson's former mayor and ex-MLA, has taken a great deal of comfort from the kindness of his neighbours, friends, and fellow Dawsonites.

Even Lauren, their primary school daughter, has appreciated the kind words.

On Sunday, Fire Chief Jim Regimbal said he'd spent most of last Thursday evening and a good deal of Friday morning in the building with officials from the fire marshal's office.

They found the cause was accidental and had turned the building back over to the owners and the insurance adjusters at 12:15 p.m. Friday.

'The cause was the improper use of electrical equipment,' he said.

'There was an electrical plug in the wall under the bed which had been pushed against the wall. Over years, the wires just wore off, and instead of having 300 wires running through the core, there were maybe half of them with the same amount of current going through.'

A fire had started in the box spring under the mattress due to the heat from the damaged plug.

'Over time, the movement of the bed had worn them (the wires) away,' Regimbal said.

'When the housekeeper stripped the bed and came in to put on a fresh sheet, the introduction of oxygen into the room did it. The (snapping) sounds she heard would have definitely been the fire shooting up right away.'

The position of the bed, on a low support near the floor, would have restricted air to the fire and given it time to smoulder for a bit.

'You probably wouldn't have smelled any smoke at all.'

Regimbal said the insurance adjuster gave him a value of '500 plus' basically $500,000 and up in terms of damage.

The fire chief noted that while the water damage to the first floor had looked very bad on the day of the fire, it looked better a day later. Much of the damaged ceiling was of the drop tile type that hides the wires and pipes, so it would be better than having to replace dry wall material.

Regimbal anticipates it should be possible to reopen the ground floor, with the bar and those rooms, as well as the rooms in the untouched separate hotel annex, within six to eight weeks, possibly sooner.