Turkey 19 people in custody after fire in Turkish ski hotel

Following the devastating hotel fire in a Turkish ski resort that left 78 people dead, 19 people have now been remanded in custody.

According to the state news agency Anadolu, these include the owner and manager of the hotel, the head of the local fire department and the deputy mayor of the city of Bolu. In addition, an employee of a responsible inspection company has been declared wanted.

The fire broke out last week in a ski hotel with more than 230 guests in the north-western province of Bolu. Some of the people tried to save themselves by tying sheets together or jumping out of the window. Many were unable to escape the flames.

The fire caused great outrage among the population because fire protection measures were allegedly massively neglected.

Criticism of investigations

The central government and the municipality of Bolu, which is led by the CHP in the opposition, have been blaming each other for the disaster for days.

Turkey has a dismal record when it comes to building safety measures. It was only on Friday evening that a house in Konya in central Anatolia suddenly collapsed for as yet unexplained reasons, killing two people. Last year, around 29 people were killed in a fire in a nightclub in Istanbul. Experts blame the high number of victims, officially more than 50,000, caused by the earthquakes in 2023 on defects in the building fabric, among other things.

SDA