A fire ripped through a bar’s New Year celebration in the Swiss Alpine resort of Crans-Montana less than two hours after midnight, killing approximately 40 people and injuring 115 others, most seriously, police said.
New Year’s Celebration Turns Tragic in Switzerland
Authorities did not immediately have an exact count of the deceased. The Crans-Montana resort, known for skiing and golf, saw its Le Constellation bar transform from a scene of revelry into one of Switzerland’s worst tragedies.
Valais Canton police commander Frédéric Gisler said work is underway to identify the victims and inform their families, adding that the community is “devastated”. The country will hold five days of mourning.
Thirteen of the wounded were Italian citizens, and another six Italians are unaccounted for, according to Italy’s ambassador to Switzerland, Gian Lorenzo Cornado.
Valais Canton attorney general Beatrice Pilloud said it was too early to determine the cause of the fire, and experts have not yet been able to enter the wreckage. “At no moment is there a question of any kind of attack,” Pilloud said.
The number of people in the bar at the time of the fire is “currently totally unknown,” and its maximum capacity will be part of the investigation. “For the time being, we don’t have any suspect,” Pilloud added. “An investigation has been opened, not against anyone, but to illuminate the circumstances of this dramatic fire.”
Gisler said identifying the victims is the priority, and that “this work will have to take several days”.
Axel Clavier, a 16-year-old from Paris who survived the blaze, described “total chaos” inside the bar. He said one of his friends died and “two or three were missing.” He recalled seeing waitresses arrive with champagne bottles with sparklers.
Clavier said he felt like he was suffocating and initially hid behind a table, then ran upstairs and tried to break a plexiglass window with a table to escape. He lost his jacket, shoes, phone and bank card while fleeing, but said, “I am still alive and it’s just stuff.” He added, “I’m still in shock.”
Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV they saw a male bartender lifting a female bartender on his shoulders as she held a lit candle in a bottle, and the flames spread, collapsing the wooden ceiling. One of the women described a crowd surge as people frantically tried to escape from a basement nightclub up a narrow flight of stairs and through a narrow door.
Another witness speaking to BFMTV described people smashing windows to escape the blaze, some gravely injured, and panicked parents rushing to the scene in cars to see whether their children were trapped inside. The witness said he saw about 20 people scrambling to get out of the smoke and flames and likened what he saw to a horror movie.
Giovanni Tamburi is among those unaccounted for, and his mother, Carla Masielli, issued an appeal for any news about her son, asking the media to show his photo in hopes of identifying him. “We have called all the hospitals but they don’t give me any news. We don’t know if he’s among the dead. We don’t know if he’s among the missing,” she said. “They don’t tell us anything!”
The injured were so numerous that the intensive care unit and operating theater at the regional hospital quickly reached full capacity, said Mathias Reynard, head of the regional government of the Valais Canton. “This evening should have been a moment of celebration and coming together, but it turned into a nightmare,” said Reynard.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani is planning to go to the site on Friday given the significant number of Italians involved. Three of the wounded were being transported from the Sion hospital in Switzerland to Milan’s Niguarda, the Italian civil protection agency said.
Authorities have called on the local population to show caution in the coming days to avoid any accidents that could require medical resources that are already overwhelmed. Crans-Montana is a popular tourist destination with high-altitude ski runs and a golf club.
The Swiss blaze came 25 years after an inferno in the Dutch fishing town of Volendam on New Year’s Eve, which killed 14 people and injured more than 200 as they celebrated in a cafe.
Swiss President Guy Parmelin said in a social media post that the government’s “thoughts go to the victims, to the injured and their relatives, to whom it addresses its sincere condolences”. Parmelin delayed a traditional New Year’s address to the nation out of respect for the families of the victims.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) said the New Zealand Consulate-General in Geneva is monitoring the situation. MFAT stated that Swiss emergency services have confirmed that nationals from a number of countries are likely to have been affected and that identifying the dead and injured will take time. The ministry said it has not been approached for assistance by any New Zealanders related to the fire. There were 67 New Zealanders registered as being in Switzerland using MFAT’s SafeTravel tool, but none listed Crans-Montana or Valais Canton as an address.
Additional reporting by 1News.
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