Kazim Beceren said fire safety systems were designed with the aim of taking 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.
When an alarm goes off, the person in charge of the fire control dashboard is expected to check the location, according to the head of the Turkish Fire Protection and Education Foundation.
If there is no indication of a false alarm or if a second detector sends a warning, fire alarms are then normally activated throughout the building.
In a properly installed system, people are then directed by announcement to the nearest fire exits, with flashing lights for people who are hearing-impaired or audible warnings for those sleeping.
As fires can spread very quickly, sprinkler systems are seen as highly important for intervention at an early stage.
So too is a back-up power source. According to fire protection regulations, signs pointing to emergency exits and lights showing the paths to these exits have to work for one to three hours, even if there is a power outage.
The engineers’ and architects’ union in Bolu said in a statement that “an automatic sprinkler system is mandatory” in buildings of this size.
“The photos on the hotel’s website show that the automatic sprinkler system, which was supposed to be installed in 2008, was not installed. Because of this failure, the fire spread rapidly and there were casualties.”
BBC Turkish has not been able to independently confirm the allegations about either the wooden cladding on the building or the hotel’s fire extinguishing system.
