A fire ripped through a 12-story hotel in a ski resort in Turkey on Tuesday, killing at least 66 people and injuring 51 others, authorities said, turning an idyllic vacation spot into a smoke-filled nightmare.
The disaster struck during Turkey’s winter holidays, when children are out of school and many families go on holiday, 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 Tundes said on social media that six prosecutors had been assigned to investigate the fire and that four people, including the hotel’s owner, had been taken into custody.
The blaze broke out before dawn at the Grand Kartal Hotel in Kartalkaya, 180 miles east of Istanbul, sending large flames out of windows and thick smoke billowing from the roof.
Around 230 guests are believed to have been in the hotel at the time, in addition to a number of employees. Some survivors told Turkish media of terrifying escapes, made worse by the lack of fire alarms or clear fire escapes.
“The smoke was so intense that we could hardly breathe,” Aylem Sedürk, who was vacationing at the hotel with her family, told the state-run Anadolu news agency.
She and her daughter ran downstairs to an exit, but the smoke was too strong for her husband, she said, so he jumped from a window to a lower roof and then into a car to get to the ground.
Ms. Senturk said he didn’t hear a fire alarm, but realized the building was on fire when he heard people yelling in the hallway and opened the door to see smoke. He saw no fires, he said.
“If there had been a fire alarm, we could have been quicker,” he said. “Lack of 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 stairs,” he said.
Speaking to reporters at the scene, Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said 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 hydrants.
But no external escapes were visible in aerial footage of the building broadcast by Turkish television after the fire.
The dozens of deaths in a building surrounded by snow-capped peaks where families had gone hoping for good times prompted calls for accountability, but such calls after previous disasters have not gone far.
The fire on Tuesday started around 3:30 a.m., when most of the hotel’s occupants were asleep, according to news reports. In an attempt to evacuate, some bed sheets were tied together to make a rope that they used to descend to a lower floor, videos showed.
Dozens of rescuers and fire engines from the surrounding towns rushed to the scene.
“When I left my room, I saw the flames on the fourth floor, on the floor of the restaurant,” Necmi Kepcetutan, a ski instructor who also worked at the hotel, told the NTV network. “Then the hotel began to be flooded. We’ve helped about a dozen or more people move out since we know the hotel very well.”
“People were screaming to be saved,” he added.
Two people — a guest and a hotel employee — died after jumping from the building, district governor Abdulaziz Aydin told Anadolu.
The fire came on the same day an explosion injured four people at another Turkish ski resort in the central province of Sivas, the governor’s office said in a statement.
The cause of the explosion was unclear. Two skiers and a coach suffered minor injuries, while another instructor suffered second-degree burns to his hands and face, the statement said.
