'She jumped out and died:' Witnesses recall hell of Turkey hotel fire

As soon as he escaped the burning ski resort hotel, Necmi Kepcetutan knew he had to help those still trapped inside who were screaming for help, including several of his young students.

The fire, which ripped through the luxury Grand Kartal Hotel in the northern Turkish ski resort of Kartalkaya early on Tuesday, killing 76, began in the dead of night when everyone was sleeping.

Woken by the hotel staff who knocked on his door on the second floor, the 58-year-old ski instructor got out easily but quickly realised many others had not.

"We got out and saw the flames on the fourth floor and people at the windows shouting for help," he told AFP. As it was too dangerous to go back inside, he and several other instructors found a ladder and tried to reach the windows.

A Turkish rescue worker looks on from a room window next to a window with an attached bed sheet on the site of the aftermath of a fire that broke out at the Grand Kartal Hotel. AFP

"With the others, I leaned a ladder against the front wall and helped 15 to 20 people get out," he told AFP, saying they managed to reach up to the seventh floor.

"I tried to go in but it was hard to breathe," said Kepcetutan, who knew that several children he was teaching were staying on the sixth and seventh floors. But they didn't make it.

Relatives and friends mourn during the funeral of Yilmaz Saritas and his children Nehir and Doruk in Ankara. AP

"I lost five of my students," said Kepcetutan, the youngest of whom was six. He also lost a colleague.

A man looks on at the site of the aftermath of a fire that broke out at the Grand Kartal Hotel in the Kartalkaya Ski Resort. AFP

"My nurse friend, who works at the hotel, jumped out of the window in a panic and died. That's what hit me most." 

'She panicked and jumped'

On a freezing foggy morning, with flags flying at half-mast, other eyewitnesses spoke of the horror of seeing people jump to their deaths.

"When I arrived, there were flames everywhere and we could hear screams," said Cevdet Can, who runs a nearby ski school.

"I saw one person jump out of the window — when she saw the flames, she panicked," he told AFP, saying the worst thing was seeing children trapped inside the burning hotel.

Women comfort each other at the cemetery after the funeral of eight victims who died after following a huge fire at the Kartalkaya Ski Resort. AFP

Alongside the deep grief over the blaze in which entire families perished, there was also growing anger.

The Turkish media have published allegations of negligence at the luxury hotel about two hours' drive from Ankara.

Survivors told Turkish news outlets that there were no fire or smoke alarms, nor fire escapes for people to exit the building — a claim disputed by the tourism minister who said there were two. 

'Child hanging from a window'

Islam, who works at another local hotel, said that after he was woken by the sound of a helicopter he had gone straight to the scene.

"I saw one kid hanging from the hotel window calling for help. It was so profoundly disturbing that I didn't dare look," he told AFP. "I cannot forget that image."

He did not want to give his surname. Despite the trauma, nobody was willing to speak about the possibility of negligence being responsible for the fire itself.

"I don't know anything about negligence," said Aykut Aysal, a 35-year-old ski trainer at another hotel. "I have been a ski instructor for many years but I've never seen anything like this before."

A mourner prays next to a coffin during a funeral service for Sozcu newspaper columnist Nedim Turkmen, his wife and his two children in Istanbul. AFP

Agence France-Presse