Mourners laid flowers and candles, with many knowing victims or those still missing. Photo \/ Maxime Schmid, AFP<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t there myself, but I had many friends and relatives who were,\u201d said one young mourner, who gave his surname as Orosstevic.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome died, others are in the hospital. About 10,\u201d he told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re mostly friends of my parents, but I know them very well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Orosstevic said he had bought flowers to lay down \u201cas a small tribute\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cMay they rest in peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nearby, some groups of friends hugged, sobbing and distraught.<\/p>\n
Fathers rested a guiding arm around young sons. Youngsters embraced as they saw friends. People wept, hugged and held hands.<\/p>\n
Men stood looking straight ahead with stunned, damp eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy son could very well have been in there. He wasn\u2019t far away,\u201d Paulo Martins, a French citizen who has lived in the area for 24 years, told AFP.<\/p>\n
About 40 people died and over 100 were injured in the blaze at Le Constellation. Photo \/ Maxime Schmid, AFP<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was with his girlfriend; they were supposed to go in. And in the end, they didn\u2019t make it there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he came home, he was really in shock.\u201d<\/p>\n
A friend of his 17-year-old son has been transferred for treatment in Germany, with his body 30% covered in burns.<\/p>\n
Mourners laid tributes on a table temporarily put up at the entrance of the road leading down to the bar, which was blocked from view by white screens.<\/p>\n
Two police officers stood guard at the cordon.<\/p>\n
A steady stream of people brought candles and flowers; sometimes a single rose, sometimes a large bunch.<\/p>\n
As the table filled, people began to place individual candles on the frozen ground.<\/p>\n
Several groups of young men looked utterly inconsolable. They held one another and looked in their eyes, grasping for words.<\/p>\n
Some of those gathered could barely voice their emotions.<\/p>\n
A couple of young women stood for a long time holding a bunch of flowers, mustering the courage to venture through the crowd towards the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are dead and injured, and we have someone close to us who is still missing. We have no news of them,\u201d said one of the women, who did not want to be identified.<\/p>\n
After laying their flowers, they walked away, arm in arm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were young people, and people we know,\u201d said another woman, who declined to give her name.<\/p>\n
Asked whether she knew what happened to them, she said: \u201cSome, no. Some, we\u2019re still waiting.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Christmas lights are still twinkling in the town, but several bars closed their doors out of respect.<\/p>\n
Earlier, at the Montana-Station church, a mass remembered those who had lost their lives.<\/p>\n
Some families are still waiting for news of loved ones who remain missing. Photo \/ Maxime Schmid, AFP<\/p>\n
Sombre organ music played. People gathered outside afterwards collecting their thoughts, some walking away with tears streaming from their eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a lot of people, it was very solemn, and there was a beautiful sermon about hope. At least let us have that: hope,\u201d said local churchgoer Jean-Claude.<\/p>\n
One young man, who could barely speak because of the emotion, said: \u201cWe just knew a lot of friends of friends who were there. And we pay them respect.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could have been my son, quite simply,\u201d said one mourner, Mina, welling up with tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast night, it was just a coincidence that he wasn\u2019t there,\u201d she told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a waitress he knows, she serves him all the time, he\u2019s very friendly with her and unfortunately, she\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Veronica, an elderly Italian mourner who has lived in Crans-Montana for 40 years, wiped a stream of tears from her cheeks.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cThe pain of others is everyone\u2019s pain.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mourners laid flowers and candles, with many knowing victims or those still missing. Photo \/ Maxime Schmid, AFP…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[95,1975,17181,4996,128955,7573,128954,19555,2079,49122,2082,44412,27509,57982,42,31144,24176,10933,3375,46564,46765,43,2551,55401,11165,20247,90578,73172,8229,7563,28050,40,38,41,39,8844,31422,379],"class_list":["post-212606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-and","tag-at","tag-bar","tag-blaze","tag-candles","tag-celebrated","tag-cransmontana","tag-evening","tag-fire","tag-flowers","tag-for","tag-freezing","tag-gathered","tag-gathering","tag-headlines","tag-horrific","tag-hundreds","tag-injured","tag-killed","tag-laying","tag-lighting","tag-news","tag-night","tag-remember","tag-silence","tag-stunned","tag-swiss","tag-tears","tag-they","tag-those","tag-thursday","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-victims","tag-vigil","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}