Investigators believe fountain sparklers mounted on champagne bottles and held too close to the ceiling sparked the deadly fire that tore through a crowded bar in the ski resort of Crans-Montana, killing about 40 people and injuring more than 100.
“Everything suggests the fire started from the burning candles or ‘Bengal lights’ that had been attached to champagne bottles,” the prosecutor Béatrice Pilloud said on Friday. “These went too close to the ceiling.”
Pilloud told a press conference in the town of Sion, about 16 miles (25km) from the mountain resort, mobile phone footage and witness statements showed that “a rapid, very rapid and widespread conflagration ensued”.
The fire broke out at about 1.30am on Thursday and engulfed Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, which was packed with mostly young revellers celebrating the new year. Pelloud said the investigation would examine the bar’s compliance with safety regulations.
As efforts to identify the victims continued, Pelloud said investigators would focus on the materials used in the renovation of the bar and its basement, its operating licence, the availability of fire extinguishers and emergency exits, as well as the number of people in the venue when the fire began.
One image circulating online on Friday appeared to show the ceiling of the basement where the new year’s party was being held, apparently clad with foam soundproofing panels, catching fire as the sparklers were held aloft.
Mathias Reynard, the president of the Valais regional government, said authorities were working as fast as possible to identify the victims, many of whom had been severely burned, a process that officials said earlier could take several days.
Reynard said experts were using dental records, DNA samples and clothing descriptions in the “terrible and sensitive” task of identifying the badly burned bodies. “Nothing can be told to the families unless we are 100% sure,” he said.
Emanuele Galeppini, a 16-year-old international golfer from Italy who lived in Dubai, was named on Friday as the first of several possible Italian victims of the disaster to be identified.
Pope Leo expressed his “compassion and solicitude” and said he was praying that “the Lord will welcome the deceased into His abode of peace and light, and sustain the courage of those who suffer in their hearts or in their bodies”.
The Valais police chief, Frédéric Gisler, said 119 people had been injured, 113 of whom had been identified. Among the injured are 71 Swiss, 14 French, 11 Italians, four Serbs, and one person each from Bosnia, Belgium, Luxembourg, Poland and Portugal.
Eric Bonvin, the director of the regional hospital in Sion, told the press conference that the type of injuries received by most of the wounded “will need to be treated for a very long time”.
The EU said it had contacted Swiss authorities about providing medical assistance. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said some of the injured were being cared for in French hospitals. Others were being treated in Germany and Poland.
Gisler said the death toll still stood at 40, with formal identification continuing. A ceremony will be held on 9 January in Crans-Montana to give the shellshocked, close-knit community in the mountain resort a chance to remember the victims.
Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, who visited Crans-Montana on Friday, said 13 Italian nationals were in hospital, while six were missing. France’s foreign ministry said nine French nationals were among the injured and eight were missing.
Stéphane Ganzer, a regional health and safety official, told RTL radio earlier on Friday that “a large number” of the injured were in a critical condition. “When 15% or more of an adult’s body has third-degree burns, there is a risk of death,” he said.
Ganzer told the press conference the families of the victims would receive psychological support from the police, describing the tragedy as “unprecedented in the history of our canton”. About 40 police officers are still on the scene, he said.
Pelloud said no criminal liability had yet been established, adding that it was “essential that we do not make any assumptions”. It was not clear when the last fire checks at the bar were carried out, but no irregularities were reported.
The prosecutor said the owners of the bar had been questioned, but not under caution. If there were grounds to suspect their liability, “an investigation will be opened for negligent arson, negligent homicide, and negligent bodily injury”.
French media, citing property records, have said the bar is owned by two French nationals, Jacques and Jessica Moretti, who bought it in 2015 and also owned two other establishments in the area incluidng a hamburger restaurant in the town.
A friend of the couple, who are originally from Corsica and arrived in the area in the early 2000s, said Jessica Moretti, who was in the bar when the fire broke out, had been burned on the arm. Both have since been unreachable.
Several witness accounts reported by the Swiss, French and Italian media said restaurant staff had held sparklers mounted on champagne bottles high as part of a regular show for patrons, who made special orders to their tables.
There were “waitresses with champagne bottles and little sparklers”, one witness, Axel, told the Italian media outlet Local Team. “They got too close to the ceiling, and suddenly it all caught fire.”
A Swiss fire expert, Markus Knorr, told the Swiss outlet 20 Minutes that the type of soundproofing panels apparently used “burn fast and burst into flames” unless fireproofed, and fire can “spread extremely fast since they are mounted horizontally”.
Concerns have also been raised about the number of exits from the bar’s basement, which was used for special events and reportedly accessible from the ground floor only by a single staircase described as narrow by several survivors. According to its website, Le Constellation can host up to 300 people.
Residents of Crans-Montana, many of whom knew victims, have been stunned by the disaster. Hundreds of people stood in silence near the scene as they came to pay their respects to the dead and injured on Thursday night.
The mound of floral tributes outside Le Constellation continued to grow on Friday. “Rest in peace among the stars,” one of the messages read.
François, who did not want to give his surname, said: “I woke up to a loud bang at about 1.30am but then it went silent. I fell back to sleep and then saw the news in the morning. It seems that so many young people have lost their lives. We’ve never experienced anything like this.”
Arlino Marchese and his friend Sacha Dimic, from the nearby town of Sierre, were in Crans-Montana to ski on Friday. “We used to go to Le Constellation a lot when we were younger,” said Dimic. “It was a good bar, with a good atmosphere and really popular. All those lives gone, it’s terrible.”
Piermarco Pani, an 18-year-old who, like many others in the town, knew the bar well, said: “They were people like us,.” Dozens of people left flowers or lit candles on a makeshift altar at the top of the road leading to the bar, which police had cordoned off.
Elisa Sousa, 17, told Reuters she was meant to have been at Le Constellation on Thursday night but had spent the evening at a family gathering instead. “I’ll need to thank my mother a hundred times for not letting me go,” she said at the vigil.
The Swiss president, Guy Parmelin, who visited the mountain resort on Thursday, said the country would hold five days of mourning to mark what he described as one of the most traumatic events in its history.
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