A family who were eating upstairs at a Nottingham restaurant as a fire broke out claim they were forgotten by staff during an evacuation. Imani Warner, who was with around 30 family members at Turquoise restaurant in Sherwood, said they were assured by staff that everything was under control before walking downstairs to find all other customers had left.
The Turkish restaurant, in Hucknall Road, temporarily closed after a blaze broke out in the kitchen at around 7pm on Saturday, April 1. Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service said inadequate fire escape and evacuation plans were among concerns found in a fire safety audit.
Turquoise insists its staff safely evacuated the upstairs diners, claiming the family have given a false account of events. The restaurant has been approached for comment on the fire service's findings.
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Ms Warner and her family - whose ages range from eight months to 80 years old - were sharing the function room with a party of around 20 at the time. The 32-year-old from Carlton said they had all been "neglected massively".
"We had our food for about 15 minutes before an alarm started to sound. The staff all around looked very calm and assured us that it was fine to carry on eating," she recalled.
"I had to go downstairs to take my son to his dad who was coming to the restaurant. As I descended down the staircase I noticed the smoke was getting thicker and darker.
"When I exited the property I could see that the whole of the downstairs at this point had been evacuated. They were all stood in the car park while the billowing smoke came.
"I was shouting, quite distressed, 'why have you not done anything about the people upstairs?'" Ms Warner said she went back upstairs to help her family safely leave the restaurant.
"There were children up there and the elderly," she continued. "Everyone upstairs was forgotten about and I'm not sure that people would have got out as safely if I hadn't gone down.
"I just want to know why protocols weren't followed. My family was at risk. We can't believe what was supposed to be so lovely could have become so horrible."
Tia Williams, Ms Warner's cousin, also recalled the event. "A lot of us thought it was a drill. It wasn't until [Imani] came up that we knew we had to get out. There was no indication until she went down herself," she said.
"It was quite worrying for us as we had kids and babies with us. The main thing is that everyone got out safe but I think the restaurant should have something better in place because we didn't know what was happening. I had an eight-month-old baby up there."
Another family member, who wished to remain anonymous, corroborated the accounts and said they had to "practically put our babies' heads under our clothes to try and get them through the smoke".
"I didn't see any interaction with staff from the moment we got up until when we left," she said. "We used our own initiative and went out the door we came in."
A Nottinghamshire Fire Service spokesperson said: "This was an accidental fire caused by the cooking extraction system. A post-fire inspection was completed and following our findings, a fire safety audit was carried out by Fire Protection.
"We are working with the premises to remedy concerns. Inadequate fire escape and evacuation plans were one of the concerns."
A spokesperson for Turquoise refuted the accounts and said staff upstairs had evacuated customers through a side door. "The customers were aware of the situation through our staff," they said.
"All were evacuated within an appropriate time. For us the claim is false. We believe our staff and restaurant handled the situation well, as I can say all our customers were safe, had no injuries or been seriously affected by it, this was due to the fire safety procedures being done successfully by our staff.
"The fire broke out in the first floor in the back kitchen, therefore, there was no heavy smoke that went or felt upstairs. There was four staff responsible for upstairs, and when the fire broke, our staff evacuated our customers who were upstairs from our side door safely and immediately - they made sure everyone was out."
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