By JOHN LEICESTER, JAMEY KEATEN and STEFANIE DAZIO
CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland (AP) — Swiss investigators believe sparklers on Champagne bottles started a fire in a bar at an Alpine ski resort that left 40 people dead and another 119 injured during a New Year’s celebration.
Most injuries, many of them serious, occurred when the blaze swept through the crowded bar in southwestern Switzerland in the early hours of Thursday.
Officials believe the sparklers, which shot upwards, ignited the blaze when they came too close to the bar’s ceiling. Authorities planned to look into whether the material on the ceiling that was designed to muffle sound conformed with regulations.
The Crans-Montana resort is best known as an international ski and golf venue. Overnight, the Le Constellation bar morphed from a scene of revelry into the site of one of Switzerland’s worst tragedies.
Here’s what we know:
Frantic escape attempt
The fire broke out about 1:30 a.m. Thursday during a holiday celebration inside the Le Constellation bar.
Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV they were inside when they saw a male bartender lifting a female colleague on his shoulders as she held a lit sparkler on a bottle. The flames spread, collapsing the wooden ceiling, they told the broadcaster.
People tried to escape from a nightclub area in the basement, up a flight of stairs and through a narrow door, causing a crowd surge, one of the women said.
A young man at the scene said that people smashed windows to escape, BFMTV reported.
Gianni Campolo, a Swiss 19-year-old on vacation, rushed to help first responders. He described a scene of people trapped on the ground, severely injured and burned.
“I have seen horror and I don’t know what else would be worse than this,” Campolo told French broadcaster TF1.
Marc-Antoine Chavanon, 14, also hurried to join the rescue effort.
“People were collapsing. We were doing everything we could to save them,” he told The Associated Press. “There was one of our friends: She was struggling to get out. She was all burnt. You can’t imagine the pain I saw.”
Blaze triggered flashover
Investigators will examine whether sparklers were permitted for use in the bar. They will also look at the safety measures on the premises, including fire extinguishers, escape routes, and compliance with regulations, Valais canton Attorney General Béatrice Pilloud said Friday.
She also warned of possible prosecutions if there was any criminal liability involving individuals.
Swiss officials described the blaze as a likely flashover, meaning that it triggered the release of combustible gases that can ignite violently.
The injured suffered from serious burns and smoke inhalation. Some were flown to specialist hospitals across the country and elsewhere in Europe.
Nationalities of the missing
Of the 119 injured, 113 have been identified, officials said Friday.
The injured include 71 Swiss nationals, 14 French and 11 Italians, along with citizens of Serbia, Bosnia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal and Poland, Valais Canton police commander Frédéric Gisler said Friday. The nationalities of 14 people remain unclear.
The severity of the burns has made it very difficult to identify bodies, bringing more agony for families who now must hand over DNA samples to authorities.
Arthur Brodard, 16, from Lausanne is among the missing. He went to the bar with friends to celebrate the new year, and on Friday evening his mother, Laetitia, was in Crans-Montana and frantic to find him. She held out “a glimmer of hope” that he might be one of the six injured people who had yet to be identified.
“I’m looking everywhere. The body of my son is somewhere,” she told reporters. “I want to know, where is my child, and be by his side. Wherever that may be, be it in the intensive care unit or the morgue.”
Emanuele Galeppini, a promising 17-year-old golfer who competed internationally, is officially listed as one of Italy’s missing nationals. His uncle, Sebastiano Galeppini, told Italian news agency ANSA that their family is awaiting DNA checks, though the Italian Golf Federation announced on its website that he had died.
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.
Hospital quickly reached capacity
The nearby regional hospital in Sion took numerous victims from the fire. Its general director, Eric Bonvin, recounted how staff scrambled to determine the extent of people’s injuries.
The hospital, which is about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the resort by air, quickly hit full capacity, authorities said.
By Friday afternoon, most had transferred to other hospitals in medical evacuation flights, while others had been discharged, Bonvin said.
Venue for elite skiers
With high-altitude ski runs rising around 3,000 meters (nearly 9,850 feet) in the heart of the Valais region’s snowy peaks and pine forests, Crans-Montana is one of the top venues on the World Cup circuit.
The resort will host the best men’s and women’s downhill racers, including Lindsey Vonn, for their final events before the Milan Cortina Olympics in February.
The town’s Crans-sur-Sierre golf club, down the street from the bar, stages the European Masters each August on a picturesque course.
___
Stefanie Dazio reported from Berlin. Kostya Manenkov in Crans-Montana, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Graham Dunbar in Geneva, and Nicole Winfield in Rome, contributed to this report.
