What caused the Turkish ski resort hotel fire disaster?

The fire that killed at least 76 people at the Grand Kartal Hotel in the early hours of Monday is one of the deadliest disasters in Turkish history.

Some survivors said they had not heard an alarm and experts told the BBC they would not have expected a large death toll in a hotel where the fire protection system was working properly.

The 12-story hotel in Turkey’s popular Kartalkaya ski resort hosts tens of thousands of visitors each year, so Turks want to know how such a horrific tragedy could have happened at the start of a two-week school holiday.

The interior minister said the fire started at 03:27 (00:27 GMT) in the restaurant area on the fourth floor and firefighters arrived within 45 minutes.

Some survivors have described smelling smoke as much as an hour earlier.

Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said the hotel had a “certificate issued by the fire department.”

But this has been disputed by the local mayor, Tanju Ozcan, who said that the fire department had not issued a positive report since 2007.

Some survivors have said they did not hear an alarm, and there have been claims of inadequate fire-fighting systems at the hotel.

“My wife smelled fire,” said Atakan Yelkovan, who said he was staying on the third floor of the hotel.

“We came down earlier than others. The alarm didn’t go off… It took about an hour and an hour and a half for the firemen to come. In the meantime, the fourth and fifth floors were on fire. The people on the upper floors were screaming.”

Some of the guests on the upper floors tried to escape with their bed and others were killed.

Eylem Sentur said the fire alarm did not go off until he left the building. The husband had to jump from the hotel door because of the smoke: “We are very lucky to survive.”

The BBC has tried to contact the hotel officials about these allegations, but has not yet received a response.

Nine people, including the hotel owner, have been arrested as part of the Turkish investigation.

Hotel officials released a statement saying they mourn the loss and are cooperating fully with authorities.

In a large building with fully functional fire systems, experts say fire detectors will respond to a fire in seconds and send an alert to a fire control panel.

“In a good business, there should be someone in charge of this panel 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Kazim Beceren, president of Turkey’s Fire Protection and Education Foundation, told the BBC.

The death toll is also very high, which raises more questions.

“There will always be fires, but we wouldn’t expect so many people to die in this type of building,” said Professor Sevket Ozgur Atayilmaz, head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Yildiz Technical University, who has been involved in fire safety planning.

“If the structure is properly designed for fire, there are escape routes and if the smoke is evacuated properly, it is possible to overcome the fire without losing life.”

The interior minister said that there were two fire escapes, but there were indications that they were not of good quality.

Erol Percin, an official of the Union of Turkish Chambers of Engineers and Architects (TMMOB) in Bolu, said the way the fire spread suggested that fire warning, detection and extinguishing systems were not in place.

He said the building’s exterior wooden facade was supposed to be 100% fire-resistant, but it didn’t seem to be.

The head of Turkey’s Fire Protection and Education Foundation told the BBC that the scale of the fire suggested that “the fire system is not there or was not designed according to standards”.

At the time, 238 people were staying at the Grand Kartal Hotel.

Kazim Beceren said fire safety systems were designed to take three minutes to evacuate each floor, and a facility with more than 200 people can be evacuated in 15 to 30 minutes under ideal conditions.

When an alarm goes off, the person in charge of the fire control panel is expected to check the location, according to the head of the Turkish Fire Protection and Education Foundation.

If there is no indication of a false alarm or if a second detector sends a warning, fire alarms are normally activated throughout the building.

In a properly installed system, people are directed to the nearest fire exits by announcements, flashing lights for the hearing impaired or audible warnings for those sleeping.

As fires can spread very quickly, sprinkler systems are seen as very important for early intervention.

Therefore, it is also a backup energy source. According to the fire regulations, the signs indicating emergency exits and the lights showing the routes to these exits must work for one to three hours, even if the power is interrupted.

As the union of engineers and architects of Bolu has stated in a statement, in buildings of this size “an automatic sprinkler system is mandatory”.

“As photos on the hotel’s website show, the automatic sprinkler system that should have been installed in 2008 was not installed. Due to this failure, the fire spread quickly and there were casualties.”

BBC Turkish was unable to independently confirm the allegations about the building’s wooden cladding or the hotel’s fire suppression system.

One of the big questions is whether the hotel’s fire systems were properly inspected.

The mayor of Bolu, Tanju Ozcan, said that the tourism minister was responsible because the hotel was outside the boundaries of his town. Erol Percin agreed.

The mayor said that the last time the municipality of Bolu issued a report stating that the hotel was fireproof was in 2007, and since then no such control was carried out.

However, Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said the hotel had a fire certificate “issued by the fire department” and inspections were left to them.

There have also been calls to examine relatively old structures due to changing legislation.

“Places should stop operating if they do not meet current standards, in crowded places such as hotels, residences, nursing homes or kindergartens,” says Professor Atayilmaz of Yildiz Technical University.