Mostly material damage at Istanbul train station fire

ISTANBUL – No deaths or injuries were reported from the fire that hit the historical Haydarpaşs train station in Istanbul on Sunday afternoon. The material damage though seems huge: the roof was completely gutted, parts of it collapsed and the fire damaged several floors down from the roof, according to several Turkish media reports on Sunday. Exactly how serious the damage is remains to be seen.

At first it was feared that the whole building was in danger, but in the end the fire brigade managed to put out the fire in about one and a half hours. The building is right by the water, which made it easy for fire brigade boats to quickly come close to the building from different sides. The fire was caused by renovation work being done on the roof, but exactly how it happened is still the subject of investigation.

The fire hasn’t caused much disturbance in the railroad network, even though Haydarpaşa is the station from where all east-bound trains  leave Istanbul. Rail traffic is not very intensive in Turkey, most long distance travelling is done by bus and airplane.

(ANP news agency wrote the initial news article about the fire at their news room in The Hague (Netherlands). I live close to Haydarpaşa and immediately went there, and afterwards wrote this news update for ANP)