A man who escaped a fire at a ski resort in Turkey, which reportedly killed at least 76 people and injured at least 51, is speaking out about the chaos at the scene.
Atakan Yelkovan escaped the fire at Grand Kartal Hotel, a popular Turkish ski resort “relatively early” on Tuesday, Jan. 21, he explained in an interview with İhlas News Agency, which was shared by the Associated Press.
“My wife smelled the burning. The alarm did not go off,” said Yelkovan, who was on the third floor of the 12-story resort in the ski resort located in Bolu province’s Köroğlu Mountains area, according to the AP.
“We tried to go upstairs but couldn’t, there were flames,” he added. “We went downstairs and came [outside].”
“At that time, the 4th and 5th floors were all burning,” he recalled. “The people on the upper floors were screaming.”
While some cried out, others attempted to escape the blaze through the windows, Yelkovan told İhlas News Agency.
Some “dangled down a sheet” in their attempts to flee, he said. Still others tried to head back into the hotel, where loved ones were trapped.
“Some were trying to get in, some were trying to jump out. Some had children inside, some had friends inside,” added Yelkovan, who claimed that it took the fire department over an hour to arrive at the scene.
Echoing Yelkovan’s personal account, Bolu governor Abdulaziz Aydin said that due to the hotel’s location, as well as the freezing weather conditions, it took fire engines over an hour to show up, the BBC reported.
The governor, who suggested the blaze broke out in the hotel’s fourth-floor restaurant, also said that at least two of the victims “died after jumping from the building in a panic,” per the AP.
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The hotel had more than 230 guests at the time of the fire, Minister Ali Yerlikaya said, per the AP.
A cause for the fire has not been announced, but four people have been arrested, including the owner of the hotel, the Turkish Minister of Justice Yılmaz Tunç announced on X. Additional details have not yet been made public.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has since announced that Wednesday, Jan. 22, will be a national day of mourning.
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