Faces of the missing: Families plead for information about missing loved ones, many of them children, following Swiss nightclub blaze that left 47 dead

Teenagers as young as 14 are still missing following the inferno in a Swiss nightclub that left at least 47 dead and 115 injured.

New Year’s Eve celebrations turned into a nightmare when Le Constellation bar in the ski resort town of Crans-Montana went up in flames, leaving survivors with third-degree burns.

Distraught families face an agonising wait to find out whether loved ones died in the early hours of Thursday at the nightclub in south-west Switzerland. 

So severe were the burns suffered by the mostly young crowd of revellers in the basement bar that Swiss officials said it could take days before they name all ​those killed in the fire. 

Parents of missing youths have issued desperate pleas for news of ​their children, as foreign embassies scramble to work out if their nationals were among ​those caught up in one of the worst tragedies to befall modern Switzerland.

Italy’s ambassador to Switzerland Gian Lorenzo Cornado has said that all bar five of the 112 injured have been identified now, but Swiss officials are yet to share the names of any victims or injured.

Six Italians are still missing and 13 hospitalised, while eight French people are missing and another nine are among the injured.

The first deceased victim to be named was 17-year-old Emanuele Galeppini, an Italian teenage golfer.

Guy Parmelin, the Swiss president, described the inferno as ‘one of the worst tragedies that our country has experienced’ in that it ‘cut short many young lives’.

Account from survivors and footage broadcast on social media suggested that the ceiling of the bar’s basement may have caught fire when sparklers got too close.

 Alice Kallergis

The brother of 15-year-old Alice Kallergis shared a plea for information about the missing Greek national on social media.

The teenager has not been seen since the outbreak of the fire at around 1.30am local time (12.30am GMT) in the luxury ski resort town , located in the heart of the Swiss Alps. 

According to Greek state broadcaster ERT, Kallergis permanent resident of Switzerland.

He brother encouraged anyone with news of her whereabouts to contact the family immediately, saying: ‘We have no news.’

Arthur Brodard

Arthur Brodard, 16, has been missing since the fire.

A French mother called Laetitia in her 40s said she had been searching all night for her son.

‘I’ve been looking for him for over 30 hours,’ she told BFMTV, after seaching every hospital she could find in search of news in vain.

‘I don’t know which hospital he is in. I don’t know which morgue he is in. I don’t know which country he is in. I don’t know which canton he is in,’ she added.

She insisted on defending the presence of children in the bar for New Year’s Eve celebrations.

‘We’re not irresponsible parents for letting our 16-year-olds go out for the New Year. All the parents knew where their children were. They were celebrating with friends.’

 Alicia Gonset and Diana Gonset

Alicia Gonset, 15, and Diana Gonset, 14, were reported missing in a social media post published by their family.

The teenagers were previously identified as granddaughters in a Swiss obituary for Monsieur Pierre Gonset, suggesting they are related to Charles Gonset, his son, and Christina Schneider, his partner, in Pully, Switzerland.

Emilie Pralong

Distraught French grandfather Pierre Pralong appealed on TV for any information about his missing granddaughter, Émilie, 22.

Having gone to Crans-Montana that evening with two other friends, Émilie has not been heard from since.

Her grandfather made an appeal on BFMTV on Thursday evening, January 1, ‘for witnesses to people at the La Constellation bar who might have seen Émilie.’

‘Give us the information. Call me, call Grandpa,’ he said.

Stiven Ivanovski

An urgent appeal for information is being made by the family and friends of Stiven Ivanovski.

The Macedonian was last seen before the fire broke out at at Le Constellation in the alpine town, approximately two hours from the Swiss capital of Bern. 

‘He was wearing white pants and a white sweater, as seen in [the picture], possibly those sunglasses,’ a family member wrote. 

Another young person reported missing is 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 wailed. ‘They don’t tell us anything!’

A photograph has emerged showing a waitress, riding on the shoulders of a colleague, holding a sparkler in the air moments before the deadly blaze ripped through the ski bar.

Separate footage filmed moments later shows a brave reveller trying to put out flames as they spread across the wooden ceiling of Le Constellation nightclub in south-west Switzerland.  

Witnesses say a sparkler in a champagne bottle caused the inferno in the bar in the ski resort town of Crans-Montana, where around 200 partygoers had gathered to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

French outlet BFMTV said it had been sent the photograph of the waitress by survivors, who took the picture moments before the fire began. 

Despite the efforts of the young hero to put out the flames, the blaze would soon engulf the crowded basement, travel up the narrow wooden stairs and set off explosions so deafening that residents feared a terror attack.

Survivors have since described harrowing scenes inside the club as people were burned, overcome by smoke, and struggled to escape amid a desperate stampede. 

So severe were the burns suffered by the mostly young crowd – many in their teens and 20s – that Swiss officials said it could take days before they name all the victims of the fire. 

Following the fire, two women told BFMTV they had been inside the nightclub when they saw a barman carrying a female server on his shoulders. 

She was holding a lit candle in a champagne bottle that set fire to the wooden ceiling, causing it to collapse, they said. 

Victoria, one of the survivors, recounted what she saw moments before the fire: ‘It was firework candles inside a champagne bottle that caused the explosion. The entire ceiling of the bar caught fire.’

‘All the windows were black and opaque with smoke,’ she added. She believes many of the victims suffocated.

‘Some people smashed windows to let in air,’ she said. ‘I’m still shaking; many were crying as they left. It was mass panic.’ 

Another photo sent to BFMTV by survivors shows several partygoers carrying champagne bottles filled with sparklers, apparently moments before the blaze.

Adrien was also at Le Constellation when the fire began. ‘We saw people smashing windows, running and screaming,’ he said. ‘Parents were racing up in their cars. It was like a horror movie.’ 

A young Italian man said he is still anxiously waiting to hear from a friend who had been celebrating New Year’s Eve at the bar in Crans-Montana.

He told Italian public broadcaster Rai News one of his friends was ‘was burned all over’ while another was taken to Zurich by helicopter.

‘Another friend of ours…last night we had no news, he couldn’t be found,’ he said.

‘My friends and I, we haven’t slept last night, we’ve barely eaten.’

Dalia Gubbay, a woman from Milan who has visited Crans-Montana over Christmas for the past 30 years, told Corriere della Sera that her daughter-in-law ‘saw people burned, white sheets being placed over bodies’.

Another witness, Gianni, told Swiss outlet 20 Minuten that victims suffered severe burns, with faces ‘completely disfigured’ and hair burned away. 

He said many were left blackened by the flames, with their clothes fused to their skin. 

Tim Steffens, a 19-year-old ski instructor who witnessed the blaze, spoke to the same outlet about the scenes of panic as the fire broke out. 

‘Everyone was pushing and shoving their way out of the stairwell,’ he said. ‘It was awful. They were all burned. Their clothes were burned away. It really wasn’t a pretty sight. The screams… not pretty, not pretty.’ 

Another woman told BFMTV of the difficulty in escaping the club, which had been rated just 6.5 out of 10 for safety.

‘The staircase leading out of the nightclub was extremely narrow,’ she said. ‘There was a huge surge in the crowd. We managed to escape just in time.’

Officials called the fire that raged through the crowded bar an ’embrasement généralisé’, a firefighting term describing how a blaze can trigger the release of combustible gases that can then ignite explosively and cause what English-speaking firefighters would call a flashover. 

Parents of missing youths issued pleas for news of their loved ones as foreign embassies scrambled to ​work out if their nationals were among those caught up in one of ​the worst tragedies to befall modern Switzerland.

‘The first objective is to assign names to all the bodies,’ Crans-Montana’s mayor Nicolas Feraud told a press conference on Thursday evening. This, he said, could take days.

Mathias Reynard, head of government of the canton of Valais, said experts were using ⁠dental and DNA samples for the task. 

‘All this work needs to be done because the information is so terrible and sensitive that nothing can ​be told to the families unless we are 100 percent sure,’ he said.

The first victim of the deadly New Year’s Eve fire has been named as a 17-year-old Italian golf prodigy, Galeppini, who was pictured with Rory McIlroy. 

Galeppini’s death was confirmed in an Instagram post by the Italian Golf Federation, which remembered the teen as a ‘young athlete who embodied passion and authentic values’. 

‘In this time of great sorrow, our thoughts go out to his family and all those who loved him’, the tribute added. 

Galeppini had been out partying at Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, when the deadly inferno broke out around an hour after midnight on New Years Eve.

The teenager, from Genova, was among the 13 missing Italians on a list released by the country’s Foreign Ministry yesterday.

His father had gone out to Le Constellation looking for him following reports of the fire, as his family launched an appeal to find find him. 

Appealing for help to find his son, Mr Galeppini said: ‘Around 1.30am we learned of the explosion. We went up there in front of the restaurant but we haven’t found him yet. He hasn’t answered the phone since last night.’

Galeppini’s friends and family members suspected he had been out at the bar because they hadn’t heard from him since midnight, when his father reportedly spoke to him on the phone to wish him a happy birthday, according to reports. 

The World Amateur Golf Ranking website describes the teenager as a junior golfer who ‘loves to golf, compete and eat’.

Authorities have warned that naming the victims or establishing a definitive death toll would take time because many of the bodies were badly burned.

While what caused the blaze was unclear, Swiss authorities said it appeared to be an accident rather than an attack.

Residents of Crans-Montana, which has the distinction of being not only a popular draw for skiers, but ⁠also golfers, were stunned by the inferno. 

Many knew victims and some said they were lucky not to have been there themselves.

Hundreds of people stood in silence near the scene as they came to pay their respects to the victims on Thursday night. 

Switzerland has also ordered the national flag to be flown at half-mast for ⁠five days as a sign of mourning.

‘You think you’re safe here but this can happen anywhere. They were people like us,’ said Piermarco Pani, an 18-year-old who, like many others in the town, knew the bar well.

Dozens of people left flowers or lit candles on a makeshift altar at the top of the road leading to the bar which police had cordoned off. Some cried, others quietly hugged one another.

Behind the cordon, the bodies of some victims still lay in the bar, police said, as they pledged to work around the clock to identify ‍everyone who succumbed to the blaze.

Kean Sarbach, 17, said ⁠he had spoken to four people who escaped from the bar, some with burns, and that they had told him the flames had spread very quickly.

Elisa Sousa, 17, said she was meant to be there but ended up spending the evening at a family gathering instead.

‘And honestly, I’ll need to thank my mother a hundred times for not letting me go,’ she said at the vigil for the victims. ‘Because God knows where I’d ⁠be now.’