BBC Turkish
The fire that killed at least 76 people at the Grand Kartal Hotel in the early hours of Monday morning is one of the deadliest disasters of its kind in Turkish history.
Some survivors said they had not heard the alarm, and experts told the BBC they would not have expected such a death toll in a hotel where the fire systems were working properly.
What went wrong?
The 12-story hotel in Turkey’s popular Kartalkaya ski resort hosts tens of thousands of visitors every year, so it’s understandable that Turks want to know how such a terrible tragedy could have happened at the start of a two-week school holiday.
The interior minister said the fire started at 03:27 (00:27 GMT) in a restaurant on the fourth floor and that firefighters arrived within 45 minutes.
Some survivors described smelling smoke as much as an hour earlier.
Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said that the hotel has a fire certificate “issued by the fire department”.
But this was disputed by the local mayor, Tanja Ozcan, who said that the fire department had not issued a positive report since 2007.
Some survivors say they did not hear the alarm, while there are claims of shortcomings in the hotel’s fire-fighting systems.
“My wife smelled fire,” said Atakan Yelkovan, who said he was staying on the third floor of the hotel.
“We came down earlier than the others. The alarm didn’t go off… It took about an hour to an hour and a half for the firemen to come. In the meantime, the fourth and fifth floors were burning. People on the upper floors were screaming.”
Some guests on the higher floors tried to escape with their bedding, and some jumped to their deaths.
Eylem Senturk said the fire alarm didn’t go off until she left the building. Her husband had to jump from the hotel veranda because of the smoke: “We are very lucky to have survived.”
The BBC has tried to contact the hotel’s managers about the allegations, but has so far received no response.
Nine people, including the hotel owner, were detained as part of the Turkish investigation.
Hotel managers issued a statement saying they regret the losses and are cooperating fully with the authorities.
What should have happened?
In such a large building where fire protection systems are fully operational, experts say fire detectors are expected to respond to a fire within seconds and send an alert to the fire control panel.
“In a good business, there should be someone in charge of this board 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Kazim Beceren, president of Turkey’s Fire Protection and Education Foundation, told the BBC.
The death toll is also extremely high, which raises additional questions.
“There will always be fires, but we wouldn’t expect so many people to die in this kind of building,” said Professor Sevket Ozgur Atayilmaz, head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Yildiz Technical University, who worked on fire safety planning.
“If the structure is properly designed for fire, if there are escape routes and if the smoke is properly removed, it is possible to control the fire without loss of life.”
The Home Secretary said there were two fire exits but there were indications they were not of a good standard.
Were fire safety measures in place?
An official of the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB) in Bolu, Erol Percin, said the way the fire spread suggested that fire warning, detection and extinguishing systems may not have been present.
He said the building’s exterior wooden facade was supposed to be 100% fireproof, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
The head of Turkey’s Fire Protection and Education Foundation told the BBC that the size of the fire suggested that “the fire protection system either does not exist or is not designed to standards”.
At the time, 238 people stayed in the Grand Kartal Hotel.
Kazim Beceren said the fire systems are designed to take three minutes to evacuate each floor – and a facility with more than 200 people can be evacuated in 15 to 30 minutes under ideal conditions.
When the alarm sounds, the person in charge of the control panel is expected to check the location, according to the head of Turkey’s Fire Protection and Education Foundation.
If there is no indication of a false alarm or if another detector sends an alert, the fire alarms are then activated normally throughout the building.
In a properly installed system, people are then directed to the nearest fire exits by an announcement, with flashing lights for the hearing impaired or audible warnings for those sleeping.
Since fires can spread very quickly, sprinkler systems are considered very important for early intervention.
As well as a backup power source. According to fire regulations, signs pointing to emergency exits and lights showing routes to those exits must work for one to three hours, even if there is a power outage.
The Union of Engineers and Architects in Bolu said in a statement that “an automatic sprinkler system is mandatory” in buildings of this size.
“The photos on the hotel’s website show that the automatic sprinkler system, which should have been installed in 2008, was not installed. Due to this failure, the fire spread quickly and there were casualties.”
BBC Turkish could not independently confirm the allegations about the wooden cladding on the building or the hotel’s fire extinguishing system.
Who checked the hotel’s fire safety?
One of the big questions is whether the hotel’s fire protection systems have been properly inspected.
The mayor of Bolu, Tanju Ozcan, said that the tourism ministry is responsible because the hotel is outside the borders of his city. Erol Percin agreed.
The mayor said that the municipality of Bol last gave a report on the hotel’s fire protection in 2007, and since then there have been no such checks.
However, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy of Culture and Tourism said the hotel had a fire certificate “issued by the fire department” and that the inspections were theirs.
There have also been calls to bring the relatively old structures under scrutiny for legislative change.
“Places should stop working if they do not comply with current standards, in crowded places such as hotels, residences, nursing homes or kindergartens,” says Prof. Atayilmaz from Yildiz Technical University.
