- Switzerland declares five days of mourning.
- Unprecedented fire hits Crans-Montana bar.
- 40 killed in New Year's Eve blaze.
Guy Parmelin, the president of Switzerland, called the fire one of the most horrific incidents in the nation's history.
“It was a drama of an unknown scale,”
he said, paying tribute to the many
“young lives that were lost and interrupted”.
The president continued,
"Switzerland owed it to those young people, whose "goals, ambitions, and dreams" were cut short, to ensure such a tragedy never happened again."
According to witnesses, fireworks or flares were placed into champagne bottles inside the town's Le Constellation pub, causing the fire to start about 1:30 in the morning. A bartender carried a female employee who was holding one of the bottles, according to two women who spoke to the French television BFMTV.
The ceiling caught fire from the flames. The fire quickly spread, consuming a packed basement full of New Year's celebrants. Teenagers made up a large number.
Several of his buddies were in the club at the time, according to 16-year-old Ulysse Brozzo, an instructor at a nearby ski school.
He claimed to have talked to a few people who were okay, but he had not heard from anyone else he knew was inside when the fire started. At Sion Hospital, a buddy of a friend was in a coma.
Survivors shared video of the fire spreading just over the pub. Additional film featured numerous people lying motionless on the pavement and ominous views of orange flames rising from a ground-floor lounge.
Hospitals in Sion, Lausanne, Geneva, and Zurich received the injured. Speaking on his first day as Switzerland's new chief of state, Parmelin stated that some of the survivors were "severely injured." They had sustained pulmonary damage in addition to severe burns. 22 patients between the ages of 16 and 26 were being treated at Lausanne University Hospital.
Eight of them were resuscitated upon arrival, according to Claire Charmet, general manager of the hospital. They were now receiving care in specialized and critical care units. She stated,
"This will be a long and intensive process, lasting several weeks, perhaps even months."
The horrific process of identifying the victims and obtaining DNA samples from their relatives now falls to investigators.
In front of the police barrier outside Le Constellation the morning following the incident, two women embraced and sobbed as flowers were placed by mourners. White police tents encircled the club, which is popular among tourists and younger people.
A Swiss police forensics team entered the restricted area just before 1pm. Le Constellation, an apartment complex behind the structure, had broken windows where firefighters had tried to allow the smoke from the fire to escape.
About 10,000 people live in the busy resort town of Crans-Montana, which is situated high in the Swiss Alps' Valais canton and offers a view of the renowned Matterhorn mountain across the valley. Crans-Montana is primarily inhabited by wealthy Europeans, in contrast to adjacent Verbier, which draws a wealthy anglophone community.
The fire was dubbed an embrasement ééralisé by Swiss officials. The French phrase for combating fires explains how a fire can cause flammable gasses to be released. These then ignite violently, resulting in what firefighters who speak English would refer to as a backdraft or flashover.
The president of the Valais canton, Mathias Reynard, stated in a speech on Thursday morning that what ought to have been a joyous occasion
"turned into a nightmare."
He claimed that the catastrophe had devastated him. He said at a press conference,
"I can't hide from you that we are all shaken by what happened overnight in Crans."
According to French media, Le Constellation debuted in 2015 and has space for up to 300 guests inside and an additional 40 on a heated patio.
The proprietor of the Dỹ clothing store, which is located right across the street from Le Constellation, claimed that younger individuals frequented the establishment, including her friends' kids, who would frequently start drinking there at the age of 14.
According to François, a 17-year-old ski instructor who claimed to have frequently partied at the bar, New Year's celebrations were notorious for being less stringent when it came to verifying the age of patrons.
The town is primarily dependent on its mostly European visitors, who come to shop at Moncler and Louis Vuitton boutiques, eat at several Michelin-starred restaurants, and ski. There are roughly 10,000 people living there and 3,000 hotel rooms.
What is the official cause of the fire and investigation updates?
No sanctioned cause has been verified. Valais cantonal prosecutor Beatrice Pilloud said the disquisition is in its early stages and declined to presume on the origin, stressing it's being treated as a fire incident rather than an attack or terrorism.
Authorities noted the blaze touched off at least one explosion, probably from a flashover where all ignitable accoutrements burned contemporaneously as the fire boosted.
Forensic experts from Zurich arrived Thursday; substantiation accounts mention possible sparklers in champagne bottles or pyrotechnics, but police called these unverified and unseasonable. No suspects sought; precedence is victim identification (numerous foreign excursionists) and body recovery for families.