A memorial for the victims of the deadly New Year’s fire in Switzerland itself caught fire early today, police said, adding they were investigating what sparked the blaze.<\/p>\n
The fire that erupted at the bar, Le Constellation, in the ski resort town of Crans-Montana in the early hours of 1 January killed 41 people and injured 115, mainly teenagers and young adults.<\/p>\n
A makeshift memorial, laden with flowers, candles and messages of condolence set up near the site of the tragedy, caught alight around 6am (5am Irish time) today, regional police said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“Firefighters were able to quickly bring the fire under control,” Wallis police said on X.<\/p>\n
They said an investigation had been opened into what caused the blaze at the memorial, which long sat right in front of the burned-out bar but had recently been moved a bit further away.<\/p>\n
Images broadcast by Swiss public broadcaster RTS today showed the blackened top of white tarpaulin, erected over the memorial to protect it from the weather, visible behind a white screen and police tape.<\/p>\n
Those killed in the New Year disaster were aged 14 to 39, but the majority were teenagers. Only four were aged over 24.<\/p>\n
Public prosecutors believe the fire started when revellers raised champagne bottles, with sparklers attached, too close to sound insulation foam on the ceiling of the bar.<\/p>\n
Four people are currently under criminal investigation: the bar’s co-owners; the Crans-Montana municipality’s current head of public safety; and a former Crans-Montana fire safety officer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A memorial for the victims of the deadly New Year’s fire in Switzerland itself caught fire early today,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-287362","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}