{"id":32735,"date":"2013-01-24T16:53:09","date_gmt":"2013-01-24T14:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/?p=32735"},"modified":"2024-02-15T19:00:18","modified_gmt":"2024-02-15T16:00:18","slug":"fire-in-the-historic-university-in-istanbul-brought-to-mind-many-questions-turkey-news-32735","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/fire-in-the-historic-university-in-istanbul-brought-to-mind-many-questions-turkey-news-32735\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire in the historic university in Istanbul brought to mind many questions \/ Turkey News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Istanbul\u2019s firefighting ability being questioned\u00a0as the 142-year-old historical building of the Galatasaray University collapses after fire<\/h1>\n

The 142-year-old Galatasaray University building burned down on Jan. 22, starting controversy on Istanbul\u2019s firefighting ability.<\/p>\n

The historical building caught fire at around 7 p.m. on Jan. 22 with still unknown reasons, and the fire spread quickly because the building, originally called Feriye Palace and built in 1871, is made of wood. Extinguishing the fire took nearly 5 hours despite the fire department\u2019s land and sea approaches to the blaze.<\/p>\n

However, there were claims that the officials started signing reports after the initial fire was controlled, only a few minutes before the roof of the building caught fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we got inside I saw a burning socket and cable. It was so small in the beginning that the firefighters were about to leave. But then in 10 minutes flames had spread everywhere, starting from the ceiling. We couldn\u2019t believe it. We still can\u2019t,\u201d Esra Atuk, an academic at the university who was in the building when the fire started.<\/p>\n

Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topba\u015f denied the firefighters writing a such report, and faulted late calling of the fire department.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe authorities were notified of the fire that broke out at the historical building of Galatasaray University almost 30 minutes late, and firefighters reached the scene six minutes after that,\u201d Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topba\u015f said yesterday in Istanbul.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody might have thought that the fire had been put out. Nearly 36 vehicles and a number of teams arrived in six minutes. Istanbul firefighters have the same capabilities as their New York counterparts, and the city has plans to purchase a night helicopter for the firefighters,\u201d Topba\u015f added to address another criticism after Istanbul Gov. H\u00fcseyin Avni Mutlu admitted the city did not own aerial firefighting helicopters that could be operated at night.<\/p>\n

When responding criticism that Istanbul\u2019s buildings were not ready for fires, Topba\u015f said: \u201cWe have already gone through plans for 57 buildings in Be\u015fikta\u015f in case fires break out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The university\u2019s rector, Ethem Tolga, said a probable cause of the fire was faulty wiring. \u201cOur guess is that the fire spread by means of electric cables, in other words in a part of the building that we cannot see.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the fire was finally put out, the building\u2019s roof was completely collapsed, much to the grief of students and academics, who have mostly spent the night watching the firefighting efforts.
\nThe University\u2019s students, staff and alumni gathered yesterday in front of the burned university to call for \u201csolidarity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Istanbul\u2019s firefighting ability being questioned as the 142-year-old historical building of the Galatasaray University collapses after fire<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":702,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,63,1,118,171,174,194,173],"tags":[44281,1700,10707,44284,44283,44282,44278,6745,44280,44279,77182],"class_list":["post-32735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football","category-daily","category-general","category-hot","category-turkey","category-turkey-daily","category-turkey-general","category-turkey-headlines","tag-142-year-old-building","tag-besiktas","tag-fire","tag-firefighting-istanbul","tag-galatasaray-univercity","tag-galatasaray-univercity-collapses-after-fire","tag-historic-univercity-fire-in-istanbul","tag-istanbul","tag-istanbul-firefighting-questioned","tag-many-questions-fire","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/702"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78445,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32735\/revisions\/78445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}