{"id":216265,"date":"2026-01-02T08:21:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T08:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/216265\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T08:21:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T08:21:07","slug":"a-fire-in-an-swiss-ski-resort-bar-has-left-about-40-people-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/216265\/","title":{"rendered":"A fire in an Swiss ski resort bar has left about 40 people dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland — Axel Clavier felt like he was suffocating inside the Swiss Alpine bar<\/a> where moments before he’d been ringing in the new year with friends and dozens of other revelers.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> in Switzerland’s history.<\/p>\n

The blaze also injured about 115 people, most of them seriously, as it ripped through the crowded Le Constellation bar<\/a> at the ski resort of Crans-Montana, police said.<\/p>\n

Clavier told The Associated Press that \u201ctwo or three\u201d of his friends remained missing hours after the disaster.<\/p>\n

Late Thursday, mourners left candles and flowers in an impromptu memorial near the bar. Others prayed for the victims at the nearby Church of Montana-Station.<\/p>\n

Valais Canton<\/a> police commander Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Gisler said during a news conference that work is underway to identify the victims and inform their families, adding that the community is \u201cdevastated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Authorities did not immediately have an exact count of the deceased.<\/p>\n

Beatrice Pilloud, Valais Canton attorney general, said it was too early to determine the cause of the fire. <\/p>\n

\u201cAt no moment is there a question of any kind of attack,\u201d Pilloud said.<\/p>\n

She later said the number of people who were in the bar is \u201cunknown,\u201d and its maximum capacity will be part of the investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the time being, we don\u2019t have any suspects,\u201d she added, when asked if anyone had been arrested over the fire. \u201cAn investigation has been opened, not against anyone, but to better understand the circumstances of this dramatic fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clavier, the Parisian teenager, said he didn\u2019t 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 \u201cI am still alive and it\u2019s just stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m still in shock,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. The young man said he saw about 20 people scrambling to get out of the smoke and flames and likened what he saw to a horror movie as he watched from across the street.<\/p>\n

Crans-Montana is less than 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Sierre, where 28 people<\/a>, including many children, were killed when a bus from Belgium crashed inside a Swiss tunnel in 2012.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s and women\u2019s downhill racers, including Lindsey Vonn<\/a>, for their final events before the Milan-Cortina Olympics<\/a> in February. The town’s Crans-sur-Sierre golf club stages the European Masters each August on a picturesque course.<\/p>\n

Swiss President Guy Parmelin, speaking on his first day in the largely ceremonial job<\/a>, said many emergency staff had been \u201cconfronted by scenes of indescribable violence and distress.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSwitzerland is a strong country not because it is sheltered from drama, but because it knows how to face them with courage and a spirit of mutual help.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Dazio reported from Berlin and Leicester reported from Paris. Geir Moulson in Berlin and Graham Dunbar in Geneva contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland — Axel Clavier felt like he was suffocating inside the Swiss Alpine bar where moments before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[119804,127,119803,5411,122,42,43,40,38,41,39,126],"class_list":["post-216265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-119804","tag-article","tag-automotive-accidents","tag-fires","tag-general-news","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}