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 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 the early hours of Thursday.
Officials believe the sparklers, which shot upward, 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 .
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 and smoke inhalation. Some were flown to specialist hospitals across the country and elsewhere in Europe.
Owner says the bar had been checked
One aspect of the investigation is how the fire spread so fast, with a foam on the ceiling that was meant to muffle noise in focus.
A Swiss business register lists a French couple, Jacques and Jessica Moretti, as the owners of the Constellation.
Switzerland’s Tribune de Genève newspaper reported that Jacques Moretti told it the bar had been checked “three times in 10 years” and that “everything was done within the standards.”
They have two other establishments, one in Crans-Montana and another in nearby Lens. Investigators say they have been questioned, as have many others involved in the tragedy, as they gather information on what happened at the New Year’s event and what work was carried out on the bar in the past.
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 teenage 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.
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Dazio reported from Berlin. Associated Press journalists Kostya Manenkov in Crans-Montana, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Graham Dunbar in Geneva, and Nicole Winfield in Rome, contributed to this report.
