What was supposed to be a day of celebration, turned into a day of mourning when 5, 15 year old girls were burned alive in an escape room.

  On January 4th 2019, a fire broke out in a squat, two-story concrete building in northwestern Poland. The girls were trapped in a tiny windowless room no bigger than a closet, with no emergency exit and no key. They were locked in by design.

  The building was a private house in the city of Koszalin and it had been converted into an escape room. Such escape rooms have become a popular entertainment where groups have to follow clues and solve a series of puzzles in order to find their way out.

  “If I was stuck in an escapee room like those girls it would be the most scary thing in the world, especially if it was on my birthday or if I was celebrating with friends,” stated Karyn Galovich, an employee from Salon Vitor.

  General Leszek Suski (Fire-Brigades Commander) has issued a decision that from January 8th all escape rooms, game centers and clubs will undergo fire safety inspections with special attention paid to evacuation plans and escape routes in these type of locations.

  “I have been in an escape room before with a bunch of friends and it was very hard to escape because it took a lot of brain power to even solve the smallest tasks. We had a 33 percent chance of actually getting out of the room which we failed but I can’t even imagine how hard it would of been to have to escape the room in a life or death situation,” stated Jackson Tall(11).

  The feelings of these girls had while they were stuck in the escape room was fear, sadness, and regret of going into this escape room with no emergency exit.

   “I am very scared of being trapped in a room, I have severe claustrophobia and I hate being in small places and if I was to ever be in an escape room I would hope they have exit routes for emergencies,” said Fiona Fox(11).

  The girls, identified only by their first names as Julia, Amelia, Gosia, Karolina and Wiktoria, were all aged 15 and were later buried together at a Koszalin cemetery to the sound of a song that one of them had written and recorded. Hundreds of residents placed white roses on their graves.

  Since Friday the 4th, more than 200 of Poland’s 1,100 total escape rooms have been checked, revealing a significant number of safety flaws that needed to be immediately fixed. Authorities ordered the closure of 13 escape rooms after this event.