Axel Clavier felt like he was suffocating inside the Swiss Alpine bar where moments before he’d been ringing in the new year with friends and dozens of other revelers.
The 16-year-old from Paris escaped the inferno, which broke out after midnight 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.
Around 40 people were killed and over 100 injured when a fire ripped through a crowded bar in the luxury Swiss ski resort town of Crans-Montana as young revellers rang in the new year.
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The blaze also injured about 115 people, many of them in their teens to mid-20s, as it ripped through the crowded Le Constellation bar at the ski resort of Crans-Montana, 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.
Representatives from France and Italy said their nationals are among the missing.
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Fire’s cause remains under investigation
Valais Canton police commander Frédéric Gisler said during a news conference that work is underway to identify the dead and inform their families, adding that the community is “devastated.”
Authorities did not immediately have an exact count of the deceased.
Beatrice Pilloud, Valais Canton attorney general, said it was too early to determine the cause of the fire.
“At no moment is there a question of any kind of attack,” Pilloud said.
She later said the number of people who were in the bar is “unknown,” and its maximum capacity will be part of the investigation.
“For the time being, we don’t have any suspects,” she added, when asked if anyone had been arrested over the fire. “An investigation has been opened, not against anyone, but to better understand the circumstances of this dramatic fire.”
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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. He lost his jacket, shoes, phone and bank card while fleeing, but “I am still alive and it’s just stuff.”
“I’m still in shock,” he added.
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 narrow flight of stairs and through a narrow door.
