The first indication that tragedy had struck their loved ones came around 5.30am in urgent messages sent to the family’s WhatsApp group.
A brother and sister, trapped in a ski chalet in Türkiye that caught fire, were begging for help.
“Save us,” they wrote, their uncle, Ozgur Turkmen, said in a telephone interview. “We can’t reach our parents. There are no firefighters. »
Within hours, the siblings and their parents were dead.
They were among at least 79 people killed Tuesday when a fire broke out before dawn at the Grand Kartal hotel, in a ski resort 180 miles east of Istanbul.
As the fire ravaged the 12-story lodge surrounded by snow-capped peaks, guests who came for a ski vacation during Turkey’s winter break and workers staying there found themselves deluged by thick smoke and had hard to escape.
Several survivors said they heard no fire alarms and were unable to find escape routes. A Turkish engineering union said in a statement that photos taken inside the hotel before the fire showed no signs of a sprinkler system, which was believed to have been installed years ago.
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