Fire in a ski resort in Türkiye: “Save me!”, an employee of the hotel where 76 vacationers died recounts the cries heard when he woke up

Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) has launched a search operation on all 12 floors of the Grand Kartal Hotel, where at least 76 people lost their lives in a fire. Most spent their vacations there.

The fire broke out around 3:30 a.m. local time (00:30 GMT) on the night of Monday 20 to Tuesday 21 January, on the floor of the hotel restaurant, located in the Kartalkaya ski resort, in northwest Turkey.

The authorities count 51 injured.

AFAD teams and firefighters are working meticulously in the face of the risk of collapse, reported this Wednesday, January 22, the Turkish daily Evrensel. The media indicates that the bodies of 45 deceased people have been identified and handed over to their relatives.

“Save me”

According to information from the Turkish newspaper Dünya, during the fire, residents of the hotel, in panic, tried to jump out of the windows and escape from the building by making ropes from sheets.

So what explains this heavy human toll?

According to the media, the hotel’s fire sensors are defective. The wooden structure of the building would also have allowed the flames to spread quickly. Furthermore, the firefighters were only able to get to the scene of the tragedy 45 minutes after the start of the fire, the hotel being 45 kilometers from the city center.

“I woke up to screams. Those sounds are still ringing in my ears. People had no choice but to say ‘save me,’” the hotel attendant told the media. “A nurse friend who was afraid of fire and threw herself into the void,” he added. Continuing: “If there had been a fire alarm, so many people wouldn’t have died. I mean, there is, but it doesn’t work.”

With his colleagues, they managed to rescue around 25 people before the firefighters arrived.

A committee of experts is investigating the cause of the fire.