Terrified Sevval Sahin phoned her father Erdal to say goodbye as she perched on the window ledge on the staff floor of the £1,000-a-night Grand Kartal Hotel in Bolu on January 21
A Turkey ski hotel waitress made a heartbreaking video call to her dad before jumping 12 floors to escape the devastating blaze.
Terrified Sevval Sahin, 25, phoned her father Erdal to say goodbye as she perched on the window ledge on the staff floor of the £1,000-a-night Grand Kartal Hotel in Bolu on January 21. But rather than perish in the inferno, she hurled herself into the air as she was talking to her dad.
Amazed rescuers found her seriously injured but still alive nearly 200 feet below and rushed her to Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Training and Research Hospital. But critically injured Sevval, who had been working at the hotel for just six weeks, died the following day, on 22nd January, in the clinic’s intensive care unit.
At least 79 were confirmed dead and dozens others were reported injured after the blaze broke out in the wood-clad hotel’s fourth-floor restaurant in the early hours of the morning. One of the victims was Dilara Ermanoglu, 24, whose father suffered a heart attack upon hearing the news of her death, local media previously reported.
Turkey’s Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said 11 people had been seized by police investigating the fire including the hotel owner, manager, the local deputy mayor and the fire chief. Horrified witnesses told how stranded holidaymakers begged for help as the fire ripped through the hotel. Cleaner Baris Salgur said: “There was nothing we could do. We couldn’t get in either.”
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, which 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 did not function, that there were no sprinklers and that guests were not 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.
