A couple have told how they were woken at midnight by a fire in their hotel while on holiday in Bulgaria.

Some 400 guests staying in the winter resort of Pamporovo were evacuated from their rooms when a fire broke out on the 11th floor of the Hotel Kamelia on February 20.

Among them were Mike and Mary Leaver, of Abbotts Wood, Ballasalla, who were in Bulgaria for a week’s skiing.

They were staying on the eighth floor, when they were alerted by a banging on the door at midnight.

The fire started from an extractor in the kitchen of the hotel, apparently due to an accumulation of grease.

It spread and destroyed about 70 square metres of the hotel’s roof structure. Mrs Leaver, who works at Marks and Spencer and teaches piano at the Buchan School, returned to the island on Sunday.

She said: ’It was very scary.

’I heard a commotion outside and thought it was teenagers messing around. Then we heard some really loud bangs and then sirens. We thought the police had arrived.

’But the commotion was people shouting "fire! fire!".

’We are on the eighth floor so I put my leggings on - I had a top on already - and ran outside, with no shoes and no coat. Other people had got fully dressed, shoes, coats, and with passports etc.

’Children were crying, a woman was screaming as she couldn’t find her child. It was frightening watching the fire take hold.’

Mrs Leaver, whose husband works at the British School in Istanbul teaching business studies, continued: ’It was freezing standing on the icy road without shoes.’

Fortunately, no one was injured in the blaze. But Mrs Leaver said no fire alarms had sounded and it could have been a different story if the fire had taken hold on another floor.

She said: ’Some people were on the same floor as the fire but they slept through all the commotion as there was no roll-call or room checks.’

The incident made Bulgarian national TV, for which Mr Leaver, a former sports teacher at King William’s College, was interviewed.

The couple had been offered 10% off next year’s holiday.

The couple are no stranger to drama. Mrs Leaver hasn’t been back to Istanbul since they were caught up in riots in the city’s Taksim Square.

’People were pulling up cobblestones and a police helicopter was dropping tear gas on the protesters,’ she recalled.