Swiss investigators believe sparkling flares in wine bottles ignited fatal fire

Swiss investigators believe sparkling flares in Champagne bottles ignited the fatal fire at a ski resort when they came too close to a crowded bar’s ceiling.

Officials said on Friday that 40 people were killed and another 119 injured in the blaze at the bar in Crans-Montana while revellers were celebrating New Year’s Eve.

Authorities planned to look into whether the material on the ceiling that was designed to muffle sound conformed with regulations.

Officials said they would also look at other safety measures on the premises, including fire extinguishers and escape routes.

Beatrice Pilloud, the attorney general for the Valais region, warned of possible prosecutions if any criminal liability is found.

The candles, which give off a stream of upward-shooting sparks, were the same type that is commonly available for parties, officials said.

The injured included 71 Swiss nationals, 14 French and 11 Italians, along with citizens of Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal and Poland, according to Frederic Gisler, police commander of the Valais region. The nationalities of 14 people were still unclear.

Most injuries, many of them serious, occurred when the blaze swept through the crowded bar less than two hours after midnight on Thursday in south-western Switzerland.

Mourners have left candles and flowers in an impromptu memorial near the Constellation bar in Crans-Montana. Hundreds of others prayed for the victims at the nearby Church of Montana-Station.

The Crans-Montana resort is best known as an international ski and golf venue. It is less than three miles from Sierre, Switzerland, where 28 people, including many children, were killed when a bus from Belgium crashed inside a Swiss tunnel in 2012.

The blaze broke out around 1.30am on Thursday. Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV they were inside the bar when they saw a male bartender lifting a female bartender on his shoulders as she held a lighted candle in a bottle. The flames spread, collapsing the wooden ceiling, they told the broadcaster.

People frantically tried to escape from the basement nightclub up a narrow flight of stairs and through a narrow door, causing a crowd surge, one of the women said.

A young man at the scene said people smashed windows to escape the fire, some gravely injured, reported BFMTV. He said he saw about 20 people scrambling to get out of the smoke and flames, likening what happened to a horror movie.

Investigators on Thursday ruled out the possibility of an attack.

Work is under way to identify the dead and inform their families, said Mr Gisler.

The Swiss officials called the blaze an “embrasement generalise”, a French firefighting term describing how a blaze can trigger the release of combustible gases that can then ignite violently and cause what English-speaking firefighters would call a flashover or a backdraft.

The injured suffered from serious burns and smoke inhalation. Some were flown to specialist hospitals across the country.

Authorities urged people to show caution in the coming days to avoid any accidents that could require the already overwhelmed medical resources.

Thirteen of the wounded were Italian citizens, and another six Italians are unaccounted for, Italy’s ambassador to Switzerland, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, told state-run RAI television.

The severity of the burns has made it difficult to identify bodies, bringing fresh agony for families who now must hand over DNA samples to authorities. In some cases, wallets and any ID documents inside turned to ash in the flames.

Emanuele Galeppini, a promising 17-year-old Italian 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 are awaiting the DNA checks, though the Italian Golf Federation on its website announced that he had died.

Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said 13 Italian citizens were injured and six remained missing by midday Friday. Emanuele’s name was on the missing persons list.

Another of the people missing was Giovanni Tamburi, whose mother Carla Masielli issued an appeal for any news about her son and asked the media to show his photo in hopes of identifying him.

“We have called all the hospitals but they don’t give me any news. We don’t know if he’s among the dead. We don’t know if he’s among the missing,” she said.

Three of the wounded were being transported from Switzerland to a Milan hospital, the Italian civil protection agency said.

France’s foreign ministry said eight French people are missing and another nine are among the injured. Top-flight French football team FC Metz said one of its trainee players, 19-year-old Tahirys Dos Santos, was badly burned and has been transferred by plane to Germany for treatment.

Axel Clavier, a 16-year-old from Paris, escaped the inferno by forcing a window open with a table. He said it felt like he was suffocating inside the bar where moments before he had been ringing in the new year with friends and dozens of other revellers.

The teenager told the Associated Press that “two or three” of his friends remained missing hours after the disaster.

Out of the 119 injured, 113 have now been identified, officials said on Friday.

Eric Bonvin, general director of the regional hospital in Sion that took in several dozen injured people, said those with severe burns face months of treatment but expressed hope that their youth will speed their recovery.

The injured were teenagers and young adults, roughly 20 years old on average, he told The Associated Press inside the hospital, which is about 10 kilometres (six miles) from the resort by air. Survivors have described seeing their fellow revellers struggling to escape the inferno, some with severe burns.

Mr Bonvin recounted how hospital staff scrambled to determine the extent of people’s injuries — aided by colleagues who had not been scheduled to work but rushed in to lend a hand.

“It’s a very particular situation because at the beginning burns are not necessarily apparent, the nerve endings are burnt so feelings are lost and the person is most of all in a state of shock,” he said. “At those moments, every minute counts.”

Injured survivors suffered burns to varying degrees, not just to their skin but also to their airways.

“There were inhalations of both smoke and also of heat that for some probably led to internal burns. That’s a really catastrophic situation, as you can imagine,” Mr Bonvin said.

The hospital was well staffed, despite the holiday, because the end of year festivities are so busy in the Alpine Valais region, attracting crowds to its mountains but also leading to ski accidents and other medical emergencies.

“Our population doubles in a week,” Mr Bonvin said. “Every year it’s a period of intense stress for our emergency unit.”

But “many people (staffers) came spontaneously, even those who were on holiday or having a night out”, he said. “That worked well.”

Still the hospital, which does not have a specialised burn unit, quickly hit full capacity, authorities said, as the hospital took in about 80 seriously injured people in just three hours, straining intensive care facilities. All the hospital’s surgical operating rooms were opened.

As of Friday, the hospital still had about 30 seriously injured patients in its care after many were transferred to other hospitals.

Swiss President Guy Parmelin, speaking on his first day in the largely ceremonial job, said many emergency staff had been “confronted by scenes of indescribable violence and distress”.

He said: “Switzerland is a strong country not because it is sheltered from drama, but because it knows how to face them with courage and a spirit of mutual help.”