CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland — 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 revelers 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 told The Associated Press 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.
Fire's cause remains under investigation
"We have numerous accounts of heroic actions, one could say, of very strong solidarity in the moment," Valais regional government head Mathias Reynard told RTS radio 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."
An evening of celebration turns tragic
Clavier, the Parisian teenager, said he didn’t see the fire start, but did see waitresses arrive with Champagne bottles with burning sparklers.
Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV they were inside when they saw a male bartender lifting a female bartender on his shoulders as she held a lit candle in a bottle. The flames spread, collapsing the wooden 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 flight of stairs and through a narrow door.
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.
Gianni Campolo, a Swiss 19-year-old who was in Crans-Montana on vacation, rushed to the bar to help first responders after receiving a call from a friend who escaped the inferno. 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 TF1.
The severity of the burns has made it very 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 is 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. Galeppini’s name was on the missing persons list.
Resort town sits in the heart of the Alps
In a region busy with tourists skiing on the slopes, the authorities have called on the local population to show caution in the coming days to avoid accidents that could further strain the area's already overwhelmed medical resources.
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 stages the European Masters each August on a picturesque course.
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Dazio reported from Berlin and Leicester reported from Sion, Switzerland. Geir Moulson in Berlin, Graham Dunbar in Geneva and Nicole Winfield and Giada Zampano in Rome contributed to this report.