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At least 66 people were killed and 52 others were injured after fire erupted at a ski resort hotel in Turkiye on Tuesday, CNN reported, citing Turkiye’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya.
The fire, which erupted at a hotel in the Kartalkaya resort in Bolu province, was reported at around 3:27 am (local time), Ali Yerlikaya said in a statement shared on X.
In a post on X, Yerlikaya wrote, “Unfortunately, the number of deaths has increased to 66 and the number of injured has increased to 52. I wish God’s mercy upon our citizens who lost their lives and a speedy recovery to our injured.”
Yerlikaya said that authorities mobilized 267 emergency personnel to respond to the fire incident. Turkiye’s Interior, Health and Tourism ministers were heading to the Kartalkaya resort and are expected to address a press conference later on Tuesday, the ministries announced, according to CNN report.
The resort is a popular destination for holiday makers during the winter, particularly at the time of school holidays, which begin in January and end in the first week of February, the report said.
Governor Abdulaziz Aydin said that there were around 234 guests staying at the hotel, CNN reported, citing Anadolu Agency. Aydin said that two of the victims died after jumping out of the building “in panic.”
Several videos, some posted on social media platforms and other broadcast by Turkish TV channels, showed flames coming out of the top floors of the hotel. In the video, some people tried to use tied bed sheets to escape the blaze.
The disaster struck during Turkey’s winter holiday, when children are off school and many families go on vacation, including to ski resorts. It was not clear how many children were among the dead, but a number were reported by acquaintances.
The cause of the fire was unclear.
Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said on social media that six prosecutors had been assigned to investigate the blaze and that four people, including the hotel’s owner, had been detained.
The fire broke out before dawn in the Grand Kartal Hotel in Kartalkaya, 180 miles east of Istanbul, sending large flames from the windows and thick smoke billowing from the roof.
About 230 guests were believed to be in the hotel at the time, in addition to a number of employees. Some survivors told the Turkish news media of terrifying escapes, exacerbated by a lack of fire alarms or clear fire escapes.
“The smoke was so intense that we could hardly breathe,” Eylem Senturk, who was vacationing at the hotel with her family, told the state-run Anadolu news agency.
She and her daughter raced downstairs to an exit, but the smoke was too intense for her husband, she said, so he jumped from a window onto a lower rooftop and then onto a car to reach the ground.
Ms. Senturk said she had not heard a fire alarm, but realized that the building was burning when she heard people shouting in the hallway and opened the door to see smoke. She did not see any fire escapes, she said.
“If there had been a fire alarm, we could have been faster,” she said. “The lack of a fire alarm and fire escape trapped people.”
Another survivor, Muzaffer Cig, also told Anadolu that there was no fire escape. “As there was no fire escape, we ran down the staircase,” he said.
Speaking to reporters at the scene, Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said that the hotel had been inspected in 2021 and 2024 and was found to have the necessary fire precautions. He also said the building had two fire escapes.
But no external escapes are visible in aerial footage of the building broadcast on Turkish television after the fire.
The dozens of deaths in a building surrounded by snow-capped peaks where families had gone expecting good times prompted calls for accountability, but such calls after past disasters have not gone far.
After powerful earthquakes killed more than 50,000 people in southern Turkey in early 2023, survivors and engineers accused contractors and government inspectors of failing to ensure compliance with building codes, increasing the death toll. Nearly two years later, however, few people have been held accountable.
The fire on Tuesday started at around 3:30 a.m., when most hotel occupants were asleep, according to news reports. In an effort to evacuate, some strung bedsheets together to make a rope that they used to descend to a lower floor, video footage showed.
Dozens of rescuers and fire trucks rushed to the site from surrounding towns.
“When I left my room, I saw the flames at the fourth floor, the floor of the restaurant,” Necmi Kepcetutan, a ski instructor who also worked at the hotel, told the NTV network. “Then it started to swarm the hotel. We helped around a dozen or more people to evacuate, since we know the hotel very well.”
“People were screaming to be rescued,” he added.
Two people — a guest and a hotel employee — died after jumping from the building, the area’s governor, Abdulaziz Aydin, told Anadolu.
The fire took place on the same day that an explosion injured four people at another Turkish ski resort, in the central province of Sivas, its governor’s office said in a statement.
The reason for the explosion was unclear. Two skiers and a trainer were lightly injured, while another trainer had second-degree burns on the hands and face, the statement said.
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Fire in Hotel