The dramatic fire which broke out in a hotel in the Kartalkaya resort in Turkey, on the night of January 20 to 21, left at least 76 dead, according to a new report.
Anger rises in the winter sports resort of Kartalkaya, in central Turkey, after the fire in a hotel which left at least 76 dead and several dozen injured Tuesday, January 21, while many customers fled the burning establishment in the middle of the night. The fire broke out for an unknown reason around 3:30 a.m. local time (1:30 a.m. in France) on the floor of the restaurant of the Grand-Kartal hotel, located at the foot of the ski slopes, surprising customers in their sleep.
“Some threw themselves into the void”
“People were calling for help, they asked for blankets to be able to get out through the windows”, testifies in Le Monde, Baris Salgur, employee of a neighboring hotel. “We brought them what we foundropes, pillows, and even a sofa, he describes. When the flames approached them, some threw themselves into the void.” Three people would have found death. Others were luckier. A customer explained, speaking to Ekol TV, that he and his family ended up jumping from a window located on a lower floor, thus escaping the flames.
The toll could rise
The fire was finally brought under controlTuesday, late morning. Search operations for victims then continued in the rubble, but the Kartalkaya station is stuck to a cliffwhich complicates the emergency response. And the authorities now feared the collapse of the hotelexplained Tanju Ozcan, the mayor of Bolu, the municipality to which the Kartalkaya station depends. The toll could therefore rise further, local authorities said.
-According to the governor of Bolu province, Abdulaziz Aydin, 234 people stayed in the establishment ten floors, whose exterior is made of woodwhich helped the flames spread. The fire occurred at the start of a two-week school holiday across the country, a period during whichmany families from neighboring towns from Istanbul and Ankara used to go to Bolu Mountains for skiing.
The owner of the establishment arrested
The Minister of Tourism, Bakan Ersoy, assured on the social network had been inspected and certified by the firefighters in 2021 and 2024. More “no alarm has not been triggered, [il n’y avait] no detector of smoke in [de] EMERGENCY EXITwhile there was smoke up to the tenth floor,” a customer denounced on Tuesday in front of the cameras.
Four people, including the hotel ownerwere quickly placed in police custody, explained the Turkish Minister of Justice, Yimlaz Tunç, announcing the opening of an investigation entrusted to “six prosecutors” and the appointment of a committee of experts. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised that “everything would be done to shed light on all aspects of the tragedy and to hold those responsible to account.” A day of national mourning was decreed this Wednesday.
