Switzerland will hold five days of mourning after an “unprecedented” fire tore through a crowded bar, killing about 40 people and injuring 115 who were celebrating at a New Year’s Eve party in the Alpine ski resort of Crans-Montana.
The country’s president, Guy Parmelin, described the blaze as one of the most traumatic events in Switzerland’s history. “It was a drama of an unknown scale,” he said, paying tribute to the many “young lives that were lost and interrupted”.
Switzerland owed it to those young people, who had their “projects, hopes and dreams” cut short, to ensure such a tragedy never happened again, added the president.
Witnesses said the fire broke out at 1.30am in the town’s Le Constellation bar after sparklers or flares were put into champagne bottles. Two women told the French broadcaster BFMTV a bartender carried a female member of staff who was holding one of the bottles.
The flames set fire to the ceiling. Within seconds the blaze had spread, engulfing a crowded basement packed with revellers. Many were teenagers. One of the women described a crowd surge as people desperately tried to escape up a narrow flight of stairs.
Ulysse Brozzo, 16, an instructor at a local ski school, said several of his friends were in the club at the time.
He said he had spoken to some who were safe, but had yet to hear from others he knew were inside when the fire broke out. A friend of a friend was in a coma at Sion hospital. “It’s a total tragedy,” he said. “There were hundreds of people inside.”
Video posted by survivors showed the blaze taking hold immediately above the bar. Other footage showed grim scenes of orange flames billowing from a ground-floor lounge and several people lying motionless on the street.
The canton prosecutor for Valais, Beatrice Pilloud, said she could not comment on reports that lighted candles had caused the inferno. “An investigation is taking place. It will identify the exact circumstances of what happened,” she said, confirming that the basement steps were very narrow. She said it was too early to draw any conclusions about emergency exits.
Frédéric Gisler, the canton’s police commander, said his officers arrived at the scene at 1.32am, two minutes after receiving an emergency call. He described the situation as “unprecedented”. A red alert was issued, with multiple firefighting teams, 42 ambulances and 13 helicopters sent to the area.
“Their first mission was to provide care to the victims … and direct them to the various hospitals. The firefighters at the same time secured the site,” he said.
The injured were dispatched to hospitals in Sion, Lausanne, Geneva and Zurich. Parmelin – speaking in his first day in the job as Switzerland’s new head of state – said some of those who survived were “severely injured”. They had suffered serious burns, as well as damage to their lungs. Lausanne university hospital said it was treating 22 patients aged between 16 and 26.
The hospital’s general manager, Claire Charmet, said eight of them were resuscitated on arrival. They were now being treated in critical and specialised care units. “This will be a long and intensive process, lasting several weeks, perhaps even months,” she said.
Investigators now have the grisly task of identifying the victims and taking DNA samples from their families. Some of those caught up in the fire were visiting the ski resort from neighbouring countries. Italy’s foreign ministry said 16 of its nationals were missing and 12 were among the injured.
The morning after the tragedy, two women held each other and wept in front of the police cordon outside Le Constellation, while mourners left flowers. The club itself, which is frequented by younger people and tourists, was surrounded by white police tents.
Shortly before 1pm a Swiss police forensics team entered the restricted zone. Behind the building, an apartment block – also called Le Constellation – had smashed windows where firefighters had attempted to let the smoke from the blaze escape.
Crans-Montana is a bustling resort town of about 10,000 people perched high in the Valais canton of the Swiss Alps, with a view across the valley to the famed Matterhorn mountain. Unlike nearby Verbier, which attracts a wealthy anglophone crowd, Crans-Montana is popular mainly with wealthy Europeans.
But Le Constellation itself was more of a cheap and cheerful bar for younger people and tourists.
Brozzo, the ski instructor, said the venue was set over two floors, with a bar on the main floor and narrow stairs leading to a basement nightclub below, where he speculated it would have been possible for people to have become trapped and incapacitated from smoke inhalation.
He said shisha pipes were available to smoke. “What people are saying is that the charcoal on the shisha could have spilled and caused the fire,” Brozzo said.
Swiss officials called the blaze a embrasement généralisé. The French firefighting term describes how a fire can trigger the release of combustible gases. These then ignite violently and cause what English-speaking firefighters would term a flashover or a backdraft.
Speaking on Thursday morning, Mathias Reynard, the president of the Valais canton, said what should have been a moment of celebration “turned into a nightmare”. He said he was devastated by the tragedy. “I can’t hide from you that we are all shaken by what happened overnight in Crans,” he told a press conference.
Le Constellation opened in 2015 and could accommodate up to 300 people inside, with another 40 on a heated terrace, French media reported. The bar’s Facebook and Instagram pages appear to have been deleted and are unavailable.
The owner of the Dédé clothing store, directly across the street from Le Constellation, said the venue was a popular destination for younger people – including the children of her friends, who would often drink there from as young as 14 years old.
François, 17, a ski instructor who said he had often partied at the bar, said new year parties were known as being more lax in terms of checking the age of bar entrants.
The town relies heavily on a largely European clientele who come to ski, eat in several Michelin-starred restaurants and shop at Moncler and Louis Vuitton stores. It has about 3,000 hotel rooms and 10,000 residents.
In a region busy with tourists skiing on the slopes, the authorities have called on people to show caution in the coming days. They urged them to avoid any accidents that could require medical resources that are already overwhelmed.
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