‘Traumatising’ - North East family slams treatment from Love Holidays following Turkey hotel fire
A North East family have spoken of their horror after they were caught in a hotel fire in Turkey.
Terri Gibson, who is from South Shields but lives in Sunderland, has revealed her horror after the Turkish hotel she was staying at caught fire.
The blaze brought out at the Asrin Beach Hotel, in the Alanya area of Turkey late on Wednesday, June 11/early hours of Thursday, June 12.
Terri, 30, who was staying at the venue with her family and friends, has explained that fire exits were locked, fire extinguishers didn’t work and there were no fire alarms sounding on the night of the incident.
She said: “It was traumatising, I woke up to a phone call off Chelsea around 12.30am telling me that the building was on fire and that we needed to get out.
“I was confused at the fact that there was no fire alarms going off but I picked up daughter up, woke my partner, and when I opened the room door, you couldn’t see for smoke.
“We were on the third floor of the hotel so I was carrying my daughter through the smoke, I tried to go down the stairs but I couldn’t see a thing because of the smoke so we ended up stuck in the stairwell.
“There was limited staff on hand, the fire extinguishers didn’t work, the fire exits were locked and it was just eerily silent as there was no alarms sounding.
“In the end, we just decided that we would have to run through the smoke and thankfully we found ourselves in the hotel lobby, where we were then taken outside and treated in ambulances for smoke inhalation.”
Terri stated that the affected guests were left outside of the burning hotel for hours before they were offered other accommodation and has hit out at Love Holidays for what she says was a lack of help after the incident.
Terri added: “We were left outside of the hotel for around two hours before the hotel across the road took us into their lobby to look after us.
“We were then crammed onto a coach to take us to another hotel - it was so disorganised and there was no holiday rep from Love Holidays at all.
“One rep had come to along for about a minute but that was it.
“We were thankfully moved to another hotel, where the manager has helped us rearrange transfers - it took Love Holidays four days before anyone got in touch with us to ask where we were.
“Love Holidays have basically told all of us that they are not taking responsibility for this and we’ve seen reports in the local media that the hotel didn’t actually have a licence to operate.
“We’ve had zero help from Love Holidays other than the fact that they were trying to send us back to the hotel tonight (June 19) so they didn’t have to change our transfer for tomorrow morning (June 20).
“This to us is really bizarre because the hotel isn’t being sold on by any holiday providers following the fire.”
Terri’s friend, Chelsea Anderson, has revealed that her 17-year-old nephew decided that he didn’t want to stay in Turkey and took an early flight home following the incident.
She commented: “We were staying on the ground floor right next to reception and I could smell the fire so when I went to my balcony doors, I could see the smoke pouring out of the basement floor.
“We were able to run straight out but there was no fire alarms going off so everyone just started whistling to try and wake everyone else up and get them out.
“Firefighters were raising the ladders up to take families off the balconies.
“We had to pay for my nephew to go home as he was so traumatised by the whole thing, he just didn’t want to stay in Turkey any longer.
“It is disgusting that Love Holidays aren’t doing anything about it, we’ve basically just been told to go through our holiday insurance and that it is nothing to do with them.”
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Turkish media has reported that more than 620 people were staying at the hotel on the night of the blaze, with the fire starting where the sauna and laundry were located in the basement.
It was also reported that three people, who have asthma, required hospital treatment as a result of the incident.
Love Holidays has stated that despite reports in Turkish media, the hotel was fully licensed at the time of the incident and that the local media reporting relates a different hotel that had a similar incident, not the Asrin Beach Hotel.
The travel agent has also confirmed that it has removed the sale of holidays to the hotel from its website as it carries out an investigation into the incident.
A spokesperson for Love Holidays said: “We are very sorry our customers were affected by a fire at Asrin Beach Hotel and completely understand how distressing this must have been.
“The safety and security of our customers is our top priority and we have launched a full investigation.
“As soon as we were made aware of the incident, we began contacting customers who were at the hotel to offer our support and ensure they had been relocated.
“The hotel has been removed from sale on our website pending the outcome of our investigation, and customers due to stay up to June 26 have been relocated.
“This will be kept under review.”
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