Welsh holidaymakers woken by screams as fire tears through Turkey hotel

'I didn't think that we were ever going to see daylight again'

A Welsh couple have been left traumatised after a fire broke out at their hotel in Turkey, leaving them trapped in a room filling with smoke several hours. Cherie and Sean James, who are from Aberbeeg near Abertillery, were awoken by screams in the early hours of the morning on Friday, April 4, while they were staying at a five-star hotel in the resort of Marmaris.

Mrs James, 57, said she believed she would never see her children again and thought they would be left to inhale the smoke until it became too late for them to be rescued. They were trapped on the top floor of the hotel with 11 others, who had also been alerted about the fire when the smoke had already blocked their escape through the corridors.

She said: "We didn't think we were going to survive. The people next door were ringing their families to tell them goodbye. Another woman was praying. I was terrible because I just thought that I was never going to see my children and my mother again.

"My husband and I just said how much we thought of each other and thanked each other for everything we had done. We were basically saying our goodbyes - it was terrible." For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here

The couple had been enjoying an "amazing" last minute getaway to the beautiful Marmaris after arriving in Turkey on Monday, March 31 when they were abruptly awoke screams of "fire, there's a fire" from a woman on the balcony in the room next door at 5am Friday morning. Mrs James said that by the time they could open their eyes, their room - and the corridor which could have provided an escape route - was already filled with smoke.

"We got out onto the balcony but you just couldn't escape the smoke because it was so enclosed," she said. "We had jackets on the back of the chairs on the balcony - we wrapped them around our faces to try and stop the smoke and just got down on the floor."

The couple screamed for help from their balcony but said they faced a "deathly silence" for more than two hours, as their rooms continued to fill with smoke and they were left thinking they were going to die. There was a roof below their balcony which blocked their view of the ground, so they didn't know whether anyone was outside to hear them.

After these two hours - which Mrs James said went "on and on and on" - someone eventually shouted up to say that the fire was out and someone was coming to help them. They were eventually rescued by firefighters at 8am - three hours after they said they woke up to their smoke-filled room.

Describing the escape, she said: "They had no breathing apparatus to get us out of there. They just put water on a towel and put it over my face. The fireman put his arm around my waist and grabbed my hand, walked us through the room.

"You couldn't see anything, it was just pitch black. They had to smash doors and windows and we had to be careful to stay away from the walls because they were so hot. The heat was unbelievable. The paint was peeling off the ceiling and just crumbling around us.

"We got to one of the lower floors and that's when the firefighter said 'You're going be okay' and then I was just hysterical because I could literally see daylight - I didn't think that we were ever going to see daylight again."

When they got out of the hotel, Mr and Mrs James were taken to hospital via ambulance, along with the 11 other people who had been trapped on the top floor. Mrs James was put on oxygen before being discharged a few hours later. They were put into a new hotel, but couldn't face the rest of their holiday after their ordeal and flew home to Wales on Saturday, April 5.

Mrs Jones is now left reliving what happened to her and her husband in the five-star hotel. "The woman screaming probably saved our lives," she said. Mrs James claims that there were no fire alarms going off in the hotel and the smoke alarm in her room was flashing, but making no noise.

She added that she didn't see any fire extinguishers in the hotel corridors and was simply trapped in their room. "There was only one stairwell to get out and that was blocked due to how thick the smoke was. There were no outdoor steps, nor any other way to get out."

She has already cancelled a holiday they were due to be going on in eight weeks time due to the anxiety the incident has left her with. "At the moment, I can't see a future of me going abroad for a very long time," she said.

"I paid to have the high floor and the sea view, but if I ever go on holiday abroad again, I would never go upstairs in a hotel again. I'd rather look at bins or car park and be on the bottom floor. The first thing I would do as soon as I walked through the door would be to look for an escape route.

She added that if she does ever go abroad again, she will be taking a smoke alarm and torch. "If we'd have heard an alarm when the smoke started to fill the room, maybe we would have still had time to escape through the corridor. It was just so scarily dark."

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