ANKARA, Turkey — (AP) — A waitress who was in serious condition after jumping out of a burning hotel at a popular ski resort has succumbed to her injuries, officials and reports said Thursday, becoming the latest victim of a tragedy that has shocked the nation and revived concerns over lax safety regulations in the country.
Turkish officials early on Thursday revised the number of deaths from Tuesday’s blaze at the 12-story Grand Kartal hotel in Kartalkaya, in northwestern Bolu province, from 79 to 78, including Sevval Sahin. The 25-year-old waitress died in the intensive care unit of a hospital late Wednesday. Dozens of others were injured in the blaze.
The government has appointed six prosecutors to lead an investigation into the cause of the fire, which came at the start of a two-week winter break for schools, when hotels in the area are filled to capacity. Authorities have detained 11 people for questioning, including the hotel’s owner, Bolu’s deputy mayor and the acting fire department chief. No charges have been brought yet.
The government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has traded accusations of blame with the Bolu municipality, which is controlled by Turkey’s main opposition party.
The blaze appeared to have started at the restaurant section on the fourth floor of the wooden-clad hotel and spread quickly through to the upper floors. Guests and staff jumped out of windows to escape smoke and flame-filled rooms or dangled sheets out of windows to lower themselves out.
Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy has stated that the hotel had been inspected in 2021 and 2014, and had a fire safety certificate. Bolu Mayor Tanju Ozcan has claimed that hotels in Kartalkaya are outside his municipality’s jurisdiction and that the hotel’s last fire department certificate dated back to 2007.
Survivor accounts indicate that the hotel’s fire detection system didn't function, that there were no sprinklers and that guests weren't able to locate the building’s two fire escapes in the smoke-filled corridors. HaberTurk television and other media reports have suggested that the design of the fire escapes ended up spreading the blaze to other floors.
Witnesses have also reported that the firefighters arrived 45 minutes after the fire was first reported.
“If there was a fire escape, there’s no way we’d be able to find it,” Hulya Karadag, a vacationer who survived the fire along with her daughter and two grandsons, told the IHA news agency.
“There was (no fire alarm). That is the worst thing. If there was a fire alarm and we had been notified in advance, people would have acted more cautiously,” said Karadag, whose room was on the lower section of the hotel and was able to escape out of a window by jumping on the roof of an extension.
Describing the chaos in the corridors, Karadag said: “We couldn’t go two rooms forward, we were out of breath. On top of that, people were bumping into each other. We don’t know who we bumped into. There were children, people were screaming as they collided into each other.”
Meanwhile, the country continued holding funerals for the deceased.
In Ankara, classmates and teachers gathered to bid farewell to 12-year-old Ayse Maya Dogan and her parents, Aysemin Elif Dogan and Mehmet Cem Dogan, leaving a note on her coffin that read: “Our dear girl. We love you very much. We will never forget you. You will always be sitting in our classroom.”
Esra Nazik, a 25-year-old cook who was Sahin’s roommate, was buried in her hometown of Konya in central Turkey. Like Sahin, Nazik also died after jumping out of the building, the Sabah newspaper reported.
Sahin, who had started working at the hotel just over a month ago, called her father from the 12th-floor window, asking him for advice on what to do before she leapt out of the building, local media reports said.
The T24 news website quoted Sahin’s cousin, Murat Bakir, as saying her father told her not to jump. The waitress nevertheless threw herself out of the building, no longer able to withstand the smoke and flames, the website reported.