At least 10 people were killed and 32 others were injured on Tuesday after a fire broke out at a hotel with more than 200 guests at a skiing resort in western Turkey, the authorities said.
The fire at the Grand Kartal Hotel in the town of Kartalkaya in Bolu Province took place over the winter break for schools across the country, a time when families flock to skiing resorts and other vacation spots.
The fire started at around 3:30 a.m. local time, when most occupants were asleep, according to news reports. In an effort to evacuate, some occupants strung bedsheets together to make a rope that they used to descend to a lower floor, video footage showed.
The cause of the fire was unclear.
Television footage showed smoke billowing from a building framed by snow-topped mountains. Dozens of rescuers and fire trucks were dispatched from surrounding towns.
“When I left my room I saw the flames at the fourth floor, the floor of the restaurant,” Necmi Kepcetutan, a skiing teacher 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 as we know the hotel very well.”
He added that he could not reach some students because the smoke was too intense. “People were screaming to be rescued,” he told the broadcaster.
Two people — a guest and a hotel employee — died after they jumped from the building, the governor of Bolu Province, Abdulaziz Aydin, told the state-run Anadolu Agency.
