Blood-curdling statements from AFAD: They died by the window

AFAD Disaster Response General Manager Sadi Ergin drew attention with his blood-curdling emotional statements regarding the incident in his presentation to the TBMM Kartalkaya Fire Negligence Investigation Commission. Ergin's response to the MPs' questions the day before and his statements in his presentation were summarized in the TBMM minutes as follows:

TINY CHARCOAL BODIES

“I was at the beginning of every painful event. We took the coal of the babies in their mothers’ arms and put them in sacks… We all have children, we are human beings too and February 6 passed over us; we lost over 53 thousand people, we experienced the pain of that, we experienced a few more incidents like this. Most of the citizens in the hotel fled to different areas from their rooms. Our citizens mostly died in front of the windows. In other words, they came to that window and said ‘I wonder if I can jump?’ Many of them took their last breath there. They were poisoned by the smoke and remained in front of the window.

IT WAS A VERY PAINFUL TEST

The intervention lasted about 18 hours. If you had seen the struggle there; the image that deeply affects you, showing how a human body is burning and the weight of holding it and putting it in a body bag... I hope no one witnesses something like this, but these are all very painful tests, very difficult tests. The psychological state of my friends after every disaster worries me.

CAN A PERSON BE HAPPY AT A FUNERAL?

It is a great pain, all those people there pass through your hands and laps and you look for parts. You think, 'I will find them and put them in a body bag, they will be identified by DNA... There is also the thing of 'What if I can't find them tomorrow...' Because it is such a bad thing not to be able to give away the body of a citizen. Can a person be happy when they find their body? They are happy... They say, 'I have a grave.' You find two pieces of an arm, put them in, and a person comes out."

IF I HAD GOEN EARLY...

AFAD is fighting against disasters using all its capacity throughout Turkey, in other words, all the work machines, all the vehicles, all the equipment in Turkey are registered in the AFAD Presidency, in the inventory of the Disaster Management Department. These are recorded in a way that can be seen the minute a button is pressed. AFAD's search and rescue equipment capacity is sufficient and it continues to increase its capacity.

AFAD RESCUED 15 PEOPLE

'Could we have intervened better if we had gone earlier?' Of course, if the place was not far, why not? AFAD evacuated 15 people by stairs, a ladder they found there, not the one they took. The first team that went evacuated 15 people immediately. So instead of 78 here, there would have been 15 more if we had not been able to save them. They took them from the heights.

FIRE RESPONSE CHRONOLOGY

- Ergin explained the chronology of the fire response as follows:

- A fire report was received at Kartalkaya Grand Kartal Hotel at 03.27 on January 21.

- As soon as the report was received by 112, AFAD Presidency, AFAD Provincial Directorate personnel, fire department, gendarmerie and health teams took action to intervene.

- The 112 call started at 03.27, Kartalkaya Gendarmerie Station arrived at the scene about four minutes later.

- Medical teams arrived at the scene at 04.13, 46 minutes in.

- The fire brigade receives the report at 03.27 and arrives at the scene at 04.24, 57 minutes later.

- Our AFAD teams were there at 04.31 with 55 minutes to spare. The total number of vehicles responding to the fire was 171. There were 533 personnel participating there.

'ADMINISTRATIVE SANCTIONS WERE IMPOSED 5 TIMES'

Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Nadir Alpaslan, in his presentation to the commission in the Turkish Grand National Assembly , said that administrative sanctions were imposed 5 times on the hotel in Kartalkaya where the fire that caused the death of 78 people broke out. Alpaslan briefly noted the following in his presentation:

- The hotel received a 3-star business certificate from our Ministry in 2008. After receiving the business certificate, it was inspected 9 times by our Ministry. Inspections were conducted upon complaints from our citizens, and within this framework, five warnings and two fines were imposed.

- In 2007, this facility received a fire qualification certificate and operated accordingly. There was no inspection by the relevant competent authority regarding fire until December 16, 2024.

- In tourism facilities, accommodation facilities are also required to obtain an operating license from our Ministry. This was introduced in 2021 with a law enacted at the discretion of our Grand Assembly. Before 2021, it was sufficient for hotels to operate with a business license. When the law was enacted, we realized that there were nearly 8 thousand large and small tourism accommodation facilities operating off the books, so to speak.