Guests panic as blaze hits Istanbul hotel

Press, 9 May 1983, Page 10

Guests panic as blaze hits Istanbul hotel

NZPA Istanbul A fast-moving fire gutted a hotel filled with sleeping foreign tourists yesterday, killing 42 people and injuring at least 50, including some who leaped from upper floors, said witnesses and officials. When the fire broke out, many of the guests panicked and stampeded to the stairs or rushed to windows instead of seeking safety on the roof of the six-storey Hotel Washington, said officials.

“I smelt smoke and opened the door but the whole place was engulfed in flames,” said Franz Eisen Fuhrer, of Austria, from his hospital bed. “I threw myself off the balcony of my room on the second floor and broke both legs.” Officials said that 131 guests were registered at the hotel, and most of them were asleep when the fire started. Another survivor, Vanda Ozcanoglu, told the Anatolia news agency that many

guests on the upper floors jumped to their deaths while trying to escape the racing flames. Fire-fighters had helped Mrs Ozcanoglu and her husband, Afer, from their first-floor room. “My wife heard a noise ... she woke me up. I opened the door and saw the flames,” said Afer Ozcanoglu. City officials and firemen blamed the fire on an explosion of a butane gas cylinder used for cooking in a coffee shop on the ground floor. The hotel is in a busy

downtown district in the European side of Istanbul, where there are many medium-class tourist hotels. Fire-fighters extinguished the blaze after a two-hour battle. Only the concrete skeleton of the hotel remained. Windows, wood and furniture had virtually disintegrated. Officials said that of the dead were foreign tourists. So far they can only identify 10: seven Greeks, a French citizen, an Austrian and a West German.