Brit holidaymakers woken by screams as fire tears through Turkey hotel

A British couple have recalled the moment their room went "scarily dark" as a fire ripped through their hotel before they feared that they were never "going to see daylight again".

Cherie and Sean James, from Aberbeeg, , were trapped in the room of their five-star resort in Marmaris, Turkey. They woke up to the curdling screams of holidaymakers, with someone shouting "fire, there's a fire".

The couple had been enjoying an "amazing" last-minute getaway after arriving in on Monday, March 31. They awoke to their next-door neighbour alerting others at around 5am on the balcony.

Mrs James, 57, 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.

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

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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, 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, the couple 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 . "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 of the incident. "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 her own resources such as a fire alarm. "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."

The mum added: "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."