Hotel in Turkey Fire Lacked Basic Safety Measures, Hurriyet Says

International news
The 12-story Grand Kartal hotel in Bolu province didn’t have fire sprinklers and neither its alarm system nor smoke sensors worked, the report said, without saying where it got the information. It added that the hotel’s two emergency stairways, both inside the building, also caught fire as they lacked fire-resistant doors.

Burned down in northern Turkey on Tuesday lacked even the most basic precautions against fires, Hurriyet newspaper reported, as the death toll increased to 78.

The 12-story Grand Kartal hotel in Bolu province didn’t have fire sprinklers and neither its alarm system nor smoke sensors worked, the report said, without saying where it got the information. It added that the hotel’s two emergency stairways, both inside the building, also caught fire as they lacked fire-resistant doors.

As a result, some guests didn’t wake up and some of those who did found their only way to escape was to jump off the building.

Another failure was the lack of a fire station in the area, a popular ski resort between Istanbul and Ankara. Firefighters were only able to intervene about 45 minutes after they were notified, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on Tuesday.