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At least 40 New Year’s revelers have been killed after a massive fire ripped through a bar in the Swiss Alps, police announced Thursday.
The chaotic blaze at the Le Constellation venue in the Alpine ski resort municipality of Crans-Montana, Switzerland, which erupted around 1:30 a.m. local time during a New Year’s celebration, also left another 115 injured, many of them seriously, authorities said.
At least 22 of those seriously injured in the fire are between the ages of 16 and 26, according to reports.
“This evening should have been a moment of celebration and coming together, but it turned into a nightmare,” said Mathias Reynard, head of the regional government.
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“Several tens of people” were killed at the bar, Valais Canton police commander Frédéric Gisler said during an earlier news conference.
Later in the day, Gisler said work is underway to identify the victims and inform their families, adding that the community is “devastated.”
Helicopters and ambulances had rushed to the scene to assist victims, including some from different countries, officials said.
Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV that they were inside when they saw a male bartender carrying a female bartender on his shoulders. The female bartender was holding a lit candle in a bottle that set fire to the wooden ceiling. The flames quickly spread and collapsed the ceiling, they told the broadcaster.
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.
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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 young man said he saw about 20 people scrambling to get out of the smoke and flames and likened what he saw to a horror movie as he watched from across the street.
Axel Clavier, a 16-year-old from Paris who survived the blaze, described “total chaos” inside the bar. One of his friends died and “two or three were missing,” he told The Associated Press.
He said he hadn’t seen the fire start, but did see waitresses arrive with Champagne bottles with sparklers, he said.
Clavier said he felt like he was suffocating and initially hid behind a table, then ran upstairs and tried to use a table to break a Plexiglas window. It fell out of its casing, allowing him to escape.
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The injured were so numerous that the intensive care unit and operating theater at the regional hospital quickly hit full capacity, according to Réynard.
Swiss authorities also later said that the unit in Valais was full, and that Italy had made a major burns unit available in Milan to treat the injured, per The National News.
Most of the injured suffered burns to more than 20% of their bodies, University Hospital of Lausanne director Claire Charmet told the Swiss newspaper 24 Heures, before adding that recovery is expected to take weeks, if not months.
Thirteen of the wounded are Italian citizens, while six additional Italians remain unaccounted for, Italy’s ambassador to Switzerland, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, told state-run RAI television.
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Officials described how the blaze likely triggered the release of combustible gases that ignited violently and caused what English-speaking firefighters call a flashover or backdraft, according to The Associated Press.
The Valais Canton attorney general, Beatrice Pilloud, said it was too early to determine the cause of the fire, but authorities have ruled out terrorism.
“At no moment is there a question of any kind of attack,” Pilloud confirmed according to the Associated Press, before saying the number of people who were in the bar is “currently totally unknown,” and adding that the bar’s maximum capacity would be part of the investigation.
“For the time being, we don’t have any suspects,” she said.
“We’re just at the beginning of our investigation, but this is an internationally renowned ski resort with lots of tourists,” police spokesperson Gaëtan Lathion confirmed.
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Authorities urged local residents and visitors to exercise caution in the coming days to avoid accidents that could further strain emergency medical services during the busy ski season.
The community is in the heart of the Swiss Alps, about 25 miles north of the Matterhorn.
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.”
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A trainee French footballer, Tahirys Dos Santos, 19, was later reported to be among those injured, his club, FC Metz, announced.
“The entire club unites its thoughts to send them to Tahirys, in these hours when he is battling the suffering,” a spokesperson said in a post shared on X.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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