Sparklers on champagne bottles likely cause of deadly fire at ski resort bar at Crans-Montana on New Year’s Day
Updated ,first published
Crans-Montana: Swiss investigators have questioned the owners of a bar where 40 people died in an inferno on New Year’s Day, as a chief prosecutor says the blaze was probably ignited by sparklers carried by bartenders.
As families wait for authorities to identify the dead, the investigation is focusing on the use of fireworks and a recent renovation that lined the ceiling with insulation material that appears to have spread the deadly fire.
The chief prosecutor, Beatrice Pilloud, said the inquiry was looking into the use of sparklers that were attached to bottles and held aloft in the club before the fire began in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
“Everything suggests that the fire started from the burning sparklers… that had been attached to champagne bottles and were moved too close to the ceiling,” said Pilloud.
“From there, a rapid, very rapid and widespread blaze ensued.”
Mourners gathered in the ski resort of Crans-Montana on Friday, one day after the fire, to lay flowers near a police barricade that surrounds the burnt remains of the bar, known as Le Constellation and popular with teenagers.
Pilloud, who is responsible for the Vailais canton that includes Crans-Montana, said the investigators were examining sound-proofing foam attached to the ceiling of the basement to the bar, where the fire started.
Investigators have interviewed the bar’s owners, a French couple who bought the business in 2015.
One local told this masthead that Le Constellation was known as a bar that would allow young teenagers to buy drinks. Under Swiss law the age limit for the purchase of wine and beer is 16 years, and 18 years for high-proof alcohol.
Authorities said 115 people were injured in the blaze and many of them had been sent to burns units in hospitals throughout Switzerland as well as in Italy, France and Germany.
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 Frédéric Gisler, police commander of the Valais region. The nationalities of 14 people were still unclear.
The Australian government has confirmed that one Australian was injured in the fire but have not disclosed anything further, other than that their family is receiving consular assistance.
The first victim has been named as Emanuele Galeppini, 17, an Italian golfer. His uncle Sebastiano Galeppini told Italian news agency ANSA that their family is awaiting the DNA checks, but the Italian Golf Federation announced that he had died.
Among those injured is French footballer Tahirys Dos Santos, 19, who was severely burned in the fire, according to his football club, FC Mertz.
Eric Bonvin, the general director of the regional hospital in Sion, a Swiss town near Crans-Montana, told The Associated Press that 55 seriously injured victims were taken to the hospital soon after the fire.
Bonvin said the injured were teenagers and young adults, roughly 20 years old on average,
“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,” he said.
By Friday afternoon, most had been transferred to other hospitals, while others had been discharged, Bonvin said.
With Reuters, AP
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