Investigators have said it could take days to name all of the victims who died in the fire that tore through a crowded bar in the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana, as images and witness accounts emerged suggesting the room’s ceiling was a key factor in the blaze.
About 40 people were killed in the fire that engulfed the town’s Le Constellation bar, which was packed with mainly young revellers celebrating the new year, and about 115 others injured, many of them reportedly in a life-threatening condition.
Officials said it was too early to determine the exact cause of the blaze, but attention has focused increasingly on the ceiling of the bar’s basement, which witnesses and phone images suggest may have been set alight by sparklers or flares.
One image circulating online appears to show the ceiling – apparently clad in foam soundproofing panels – on fire as the sparklers were held aloft attached to champagne bottles. Another shows a woman holding a sparkler while sitting on someone’s shoulders.
The head of the Valais regional government, Mathias Reynard, said experts were using dental and DNA samples 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.
The Valais public prosecutor, Béatrice Pilloud, said significant resources had been put in place to identify the victims and return the bodies to families as quickly as possible. The canton’s police chief, Frédéric Gisler, said the process could take several days.
Stéphane Ganzer, a regional health and safety official, told RTL radio that several of the injured had not yet been identified, either because they were not carrying ID or because it had been lost in the fire..
“I think a large number of the injured, maybe between 80 and 100, are in a life-threatening condition,” he said on Friday. “When 15% or more of an adult’s body has third-degree burns, there is a risk of death in the days and hours that follow.”
The victims are believed to be of many nationalities. 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 to be identified.
Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, who visited Crans-Montana on Friday, said 13 Italian nationals were in hospital, five of them having suffered “severe injuries and burns”, while six were missing. France’s foreign ministry has said nine French nationals were among the injured and eight were missing.
Italy’s ambassador to Switzerland, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, told Italian media that 47 people had been killed in the blaze, but Ganzer said on Friday he was surprised by that figure. “This is not the same number that we have,” he told RTL radio.
Pope Leo sent a message to the bishop of Sion to express his “compassion and solicitude” and pray 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 EU said it had been in contact with 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 taken to hospital in Germany and Poland.
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. They got too close to the ceiling, and suddenly it all caught fire”, one witness, Axel, told the Italian media outlet Local Team.
Pilloud said investigators would be examining whether the bar had met safety standards. Ganzer said the images on social media “seem fairly clear”. He said the ceiling of the basement appeared to have been “covered with sound insulation material”, adding that the investigation would determine whether that was “appropriate” and safe.
A Swiss corporate security and fire expert, Markus Knorr, told the Swiss outlet 20 Minutes that the foam panels “burn fast and burst into flames” unless they have been properly fireproofed, meaning fire can “spread extremely fast, because 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 by several survivors as narrow.
A representative of the French nightclub owners’ association told BFMTV that in France, any room that could hold 20 people or more was required to have at least two exits. According to its website, Le Constellation can host up to 300 people.
French media, citing the local property register, have reported that the bar was owned by two French nationals, Jacques and Jessica Moretti, who bought it in 2015 and also owned a hamburger restaurant in Crans-Montana as well as a third establishment in a nearby village.
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. Her husband was reportedly not on the premises. Both have since been unreachable.
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.
“I woke up to a loud bang at about 1.30am but then it went silent,” said François, who did not want to give his surname. “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.”
“They were people like us,” said Piermarco Pani, an 18-year-old who, like many others in the town, knew the bar well. 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.
