Crans-Montana: Swiss investigators said Friday that they believe sparkling flares atop Champagne bottles ignited the fatal fire at a ski resort when they came too close to a crowded bar’s ceiling.
Forty people were killed and another 119 injured in the blaze as it ripped through the busy Le Constellation bar at the ski resort of Crans-Montana while revellers were celebrating New Year’s Eve, authorities said.
Among the crowd was Axel Clavier, a 16-year-old from Paris, who said he felt as if he was suffocating inside the Swiss Alpine bar where moments before he had been ringing in the new year with friends and dozens of other people.
The teenager escaped the inferno, which broke out early Thursday, by forcing a window open with a table. But about 40 other partygoers died, including one of Clavier’s friends, falling victim to one of the worst tragedies in Switzerland’s history.
Many of the wounded were in their teens to mid-20s, police said. Clavier said that two or three of his friends remained missing hours after the disaster.
Late Thursday, mourners left candles and flowers in an impromptu memorial near the bar. Hundreds of others prayed for the victims at the nearby Church of Montana-Station.
Pope Leo sent a telegram Friday to the bishop of Sion to express condolences and pray that “the Lord will welcome the deceased into His abode of peace and light, and will sustain the courage of those who suffer in their hearts or in their bodies.”
On Instagram, an account filled up with photos of people who remained unaccounted for, with their friends and relatives begging for tips about the whereabouts of the missing.
“We have numerous accounts of heroic actions, one could say, of very strong solidarity in the moment,” Valais regional government head Mathias Reynard said Friday.
He lauded the work of emergency officials on the day after the fire but added “in the first minutes it was citizens — and in large part young people — who saved lives with their courage.”