At least 66 people lost their lives and 51 were injured in a fire at their hotel, apparently without an alarm system, which occurred in the middle of the night on Tuesday in a ski resort in central Turkey.
According to Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya, who confirmed this report in the middle of the afternoon, the fire broke out “at 03:27 a.m. (00:27 GMT)”while 238 guests were registered in the twelve-story luxury establishment, the Grand Kartal, located in Kartalkaya, a ski resort 170 km east of Ankara. The fire is now under control and cooling operations are continuing. At least 66 people died and 51 were injured in this tragic fire.
Four people were arrested and taken into custody, including the hotel manager, announced Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc. The cause of the disaster is not yet known but controversy and anger are already growing among survivors who denounce negligence.
-“We watched people jump”
Neighbors of the hotel, witnesses of the flames, tell us. Omer was asleep when he was awakened “around 3:30 a.m. hearing screams”. “When we came out, at first we only saw smoke in the building. After the smoke, people’s screams started to intensify. As we could not see the flames at that time , we tried to support them from here by saying ‘Wait, calm down,’ and then when the flames appeared, people suddenly started jumping in panic. A friend jumped from the 11th floor”he says at the microphone of a local media.
“A father was screaming about his one-year-old child; ‘I’m going to throw my child away or he’ll burn’ (…) There was nothing we could do. All we could do was watch. We just watched people jump…” Omer admits to running away from these terrible scenes “so that it is not engraved in our subconscious because we have seen a lot of things”. He said it would have taken at least an hour and a half for a loaded National Disaster Response Authority vehicle to arrive.
Melvut, another neighbor, confirms: “There was nothing to do. There were extra beds on the first floor, so we threw them away so that they would fall on soft ground when they jumped…” But the fire quickly spread and efforts were in vain. “We couldn’t do anything. We just watched. All we could do was cry… It was like the apocalypse.”he continues. “The flames engulfed the hotel immediately, within half an hour, very quickly…”
fire Türkiye Miscellaneous fire
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