What caused a fire in a hotel in a Turkish ski resort?

The fire, which killed at least 76 people at the Grand Kartal Hotel in the early hours of Monday, is one of the deadliest disasters of its kind in Turkey’s history.

Some survivors said they had not heard the alarm go off, and experts told the BBC they would not have expected such a high death toll in a hotel where fire protection systems were working properly.

The 12-story hotel in Turkey’s popular Kartalkaya ski resort receives tens of thousands of visitors every year, so Turks understandably want to know how such a terrible tragedy could have happened at the beginning of a two-week school vacation.

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 described smelling smoke an hour earlier.

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

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

Some survivors say they did not hear the alarm go off, while there have been claims of deficiencies in the hotel’s fire-fighting systems.

“My wife smelled fire,” said Atakan Yelkavan, who said he lived on the third floor of the hotel.

“We went down before the others. The alarm did not go off… It took about an hour and a half for the firemen to arrive. Meanwhile, the fourth and fifth floors were burning. People on the upper floors were screaming.”

Some guests on the upper floors tried to escape with bed linen, and some jumped to their deaths.

Aylem Senturk said the fire alarm didn’t go off until she left the building. Her husband had to jump off the hotel porch because of the smoke: “We are very lucky to have survived.”

The BBC has tried to contact the hotel’s management about the allegations but has yet to hear back.

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

Hotel managers issued a statement saying they were grieving the loss and were cooperating fully with authorities.

In a building this large, where fire protection systems are at full capacity, experts say fire detectors should respond to a fire within seconds and send a signal to the fire control dashboard.

“A good business should have someone in charge of this group 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Kazim Becheren, president of the Turkish Fire Protection and Education Foundation, told the BBC.

The death toll is also extremely high, raising further questions.

“Fires will always happen, but we don’t expect so many people to die in such buildings,” said Professor Shevket Ozgur Atayilmaz, head of Yildiz Technical University’s mechanical engineering department, who was involved in fire safety planning.

“If the structure is designed correctly for the fire, if there are escape routes and if the smoke is removed correctly, it is possible to overcome the fire without loss of life.”

The Home Secretary said there were two fire escapes, but there were indications they were not of a good standard.

Turkish Engineers and Architects Chambers Union (TMMOB) official in Bol, Erol Percin, said the way the fire spread indicated that warning, detection and fire suppression systems may have been missing.

He said the building’s exterior wooden facade was supposed to be 100% fire-resistant, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

The head of the Turkish Fire Protection and Education Foundation told the BBC that the size of the fire showed that “the fire protection system either does not exist or has not been designed according to standards”.

At that time, there were 238 people in the Grand Kartal hotel.

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

According to the head of the Turkish Fire Protection and Education Foundation, when the alarm goes off, the person in charge of the fire control dashboard should check the location.

If there is no indication of a false alarm, or if a second detector sends an alert, the fire alarm will normally go off throughout the building.

In a properly installed system, people are then directed by an announcement to the nearest fire exit with flashing lights for the hearing impaired or audible warnings for those sleeping.

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

It is also a backup power source. According to fire protection regulations, signs indicating emergency exits and lights indicating the routes to these exits must work for one to three hours even in the event of a power outage.

The Union of Engineers and Architects in Bol said in a statement that “an automatic sprinkler system is mandatory” in buildings of this size.

“Photos on the hotel’s website show that the automatic sprinkler system that was supposed to be installed in 2008 was not installed. Because of this failure, the fire spread quickly and there were casualties.”

BBC Turkish was unable to independently confirm the claims about either the building’s wood cladding or the hotel’s fire-fighting system.

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

Bolu Mayor Tanju Ozcan said the Ministry of Tourism is responsible because the hotel is outside his city. Errol Persin agreed.

The mayor said the last time Bolu Municipality gave a report that the hotel was fireproof was in 2007, and there had been no such inspections since then.

However, the Department of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said the hotel did have a fire certificate “issued by the fire department” and the inspections belonged to them.

There were also calls for relatively old structures to come under scrutiny due to the change in legislation.

“Places should stop working 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.