As soon as he was able to escape from the burning hotel, Necmi Kepcetutan did everything he could to help those inside who were calling for help, including several of his young students.
At least 76 people died Tuesday in a fire at the luxury Grand Kartal hotel, which broke out in the middle of the night in the Kartalkaya ski resort in central Turkey.
“Once outside, we saw flames on the fourth floor and people at the windows calling for help”told AFP on Wednesday, this 58-year-old ski instructor who was sleeping on the second floor and was lucky to be woken up by the staff.
It was already impossible to risk going back inside the building. Using a ladder, he and other instructors then tried to reach the windows.
“We were able to help fifteen to twenty people get out by leaning the ladder against the front wall”he relates, specifying that they had managed to reach the seventh floor, out of the twelve in the hotel.
Knowing that several of his students were on the sixth and seventh floors, he says he still had “tried to enter” I just don’t. “I was having trouble breathing.”
“I lost five of my students”he blurted. The youngest was six years old.
“Flames and screams”
“My nurse friend who worked in the hotel panicked and threw herself into the void. She died. That’s what hurts me the most,” confesses the instructor again.
In the frozen morning marked by thick fog, the flags are at half-mast to mark the day of national mourning and other witnesses also remain haunted by the images of these people throwing themselves into death.
-“When I arrived, there were flames everywhere, we could hear screams”remembers Cevdet Can, who runs a ski school nearby.
“I saw a person escape from the window. When she saw the flames, she panicked”he continues, adding that the worst was seeing children trapped in the flames.
In addition to the deep grief caused by the death of entire families in the fire, anger rose a notch when the Turkish media began to report the negligence of the management of this luxury hotel located about two hours’ drive from ‘Ankara.
Survivors reported the absence of smoke detectors, fire alarms and emergency staircases – a fact disputed by the Minister of Tourism who assured that the hotel had two inside.
“A suspended child”
Islam, an employee at another hotel in the resort who did not wish to give his full name, said he was awakened by the sound of a helicopter and went straight to the scene.
“I saw a child hanging from the hotel window crying for help. It was so disturbing that I looked away,” he confided to AFP. “I can’t forget this image.”
Despite their grief and still shocked, these witnesses, employees of the resort’s hotels, are careful not to denounce the negligence pointed out by customers and the Turkish press to explain this very heavy toll.
“I don’t know anything about it,” cut Aykut Aysal, a 35-year-old ski instructor. But, he adds, “I’ve been an instructor for years and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
