At the moment the fire broke out, Luxembourg’s national karate coach Raul Cuevra and his partner Elena Quirici were staying at the hotel together with four athletes.
According to Fred Charlé, president of the Luxembourg Karate Federation, Cuevra called him at around 11.20pm to alert him to the fire. By the time Charlé arrived at the scene, hotel guests were already standing outside, many with nothing but the clothes they were wearing.
“They [the coach and the athletes] now have to return to their home country and apply for new passports,” Charlé said, explaining that important documents were lost in the fire. “That is not so straightforward, especially as some of the athletes are due to travel to Turkey as early as Wednesday. We are therefore working with the Swiss embassy, as there are Swiss nationals involved, to try to speed up the entire procedure.”
Charlé also described how quickly the situation escalated inside the hotel. The group had only just returned to their rooms after eating at a restaurant. “They had only been back for about ten minutes. One was in the shower, the other was resting on the bed,” he said. “You do not always react immediately in such situations, but we were relieved that he reacted fairly quickly, ran into the corridor and the staff were already there, so everyone was taken outside straight away.”
Speaking to RTL, Cuevra said the fire destroyed several personal belongings. “We had a computer, clothes, some money and our training equipment inside,” he said. “But luckily, we are all healthy and nothing happened to us.”
The coach, who lives in Zurich and regularly travels to Luxembourg to lead training sessions from Friday to Sunday, added that while the training itself had gone well, the evening took an unexpected turn. His father is a firefighter, he noted, which helped him stay calm during the evacuation.
Of the four foreign athletes training with the federation, only two resumed training the following day. “The other two barely slept and the incident really affected them physically,” Charlé said. “That is entirely understandable.”
A neighbour living just metres from the hotel said the fire spread with alarming speed. “One person had to be rescued using an aerial platform,” the resident said, adding that the flames intensified “very, very rapidly”. Firefighters arrived in large numbers shortly after the blaze broke out at around 11.30pm.
The neighbour, who lives just two metres from the hotel, said they were only able to return home at around 3.30am.
The karate federation team is currently staying at a hotel in Pétange until Sunday.
