At least 76 people died on Tuesday in a fire in their hotel apparently without an alarm system, which occurred in the middle of the night on Tuesday in a ski resort in central Turkey. Four people were arrested and taken into custody.
A grim toll. At least 76 people died this Tuesday, January 21 in Turkey, following a fire in a ski resort located in Kartalkaya, 170 km east of Ankara. Dozens of others were injured in the hotel, the Grand Kartal, which apparently had no alarm system.
Ali Yerlikaya, the Turkish Interior Minister dispatched to the site, confirmed that “the fire was now under control”, but that “cooling operations” were currently continuing.
A complicated intervention
The fire apparently broke out “at 3:27 a.m.,” said Ali Yerlikaya, adding that 238 customers were then registered in the twelve-story luxury establishment.
At the start of the fire, the flames quickly spread to the rest of the building, due to the exterior wooden cladding, Turkish media said. Images from local newspapers show large flames escaping from upper windows and the roof, as well as plumes of black smoke.
The intervention of the 428 firefighters was nevertheless complicated by the location of the establishment, nestled at the top of a cliff.
The owner in custody
The cause of the disaster is not yet known, but already controversy and anger are growing among the survivors, who denounce negligence on the part of the ski resort.
-The Minister of Justice, Yilmaz Tunc, who also visited the site, announced the opening of an investigation entrusted to “six prosecutors” and the formation of a committee of experts to support them. Four people, including the hotel owner, have already been arrested and taken into custody, he announced.
“Some threw themselves into the void”
Although hotel employees helped evacuate guests, witnesses and media on site denounced the absence of an alarm and smoke detectors in the hotel.
“No alarm went off, no smoke detector, no emergency staircase even though there was smoke up to the tenth floor,” said a fifty-year-old, who had been with his family since Sunday in the establishment. .
“People were calling for help, they were asking for blankets so they could get out through the windows,” Baris Salgur, an employee at a nearby hotel, also testified. “We brought them what we found, ropes, pillows, and even a sofa… When the flames approached them, some threw themselves into the void.”
And according to the private television channel NTV, at least three people died jumping out of windows, trying to escape the flames.
