CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland\u00a0\u2014\u00a0About 40 people were killed and another 115 injured, most of them seriously, during a New Year\u2019s celebration in a Swiss Alpine bar, police said Thursday.<\/p>\n
Authorities did not immediately have an exact count of the deceased.<\/p>\n
A fire ripped through the bar less than two hours after midnight. The Crans-Montana resort is best known as an international ski and golf venue, and overnight its crowded Le Constellation bar morphed from a scene of revelry into the site of potentially one of Switzerland\u2019s worst tragedies.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeveral tens of people\u201d were presumed killed at the bar, Valais Canton police commander Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Gisler said during a news conference.<\/p>\n
Work is underway to identify the victims and inform their families, but \u201cthat will take time and for the time being, it is premature to give you a more precise figure,\u201d Gisler said, adding that the community is \u201cdevastated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beatrice Pilloud, Valais Canton attorney general, said it was too early to determine the cause of the fire. Experts have not yet been able to go inside the wreckage.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt no moment is there a question of any kind of attack,\u201d Pilloud said.<\/p>\n
An evening of celebration turns tragic<\/p>\n
Axel Clavier, a 16-year-old from Paris who survived the blaze, described \u201ctotal chaos\u201d inside the bar. One of his friends died and \u201ctwo or three were missing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said he hadn\u2019t seen the fire start, but did see waitresses arrive with champagne bottles with sparklers, he said.<\/p>\n
Clavier said he felt like he was suffocating and initially hid behind a table, then ran upstairs and tried to use a table to break a plexiglass window. It fell out of its casing, allowing him to escape.<\/p>\n
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
Officials described how the blaze likely triggered the release of combustible gases that ignited violently and caused what English-speaking firefighters call a flashover or backdraft.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis evening should have been a moment of celebration and coming together, but it turned into a nightmare,\u201d said Mathias Reynard, head of the regional government of the Valais Canton.<\/p>\n
The injured were so numerous that the intensive care unit and operating theater at the regional hospital quickly hit full capacity, Reynard said.<\/p>\n
Resort town sits in the heart of the Alps<\/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 any accidents that could require medical resources that are already overwhelmed.<\/p>\n
With high-altitude ski runs rising nearly 9,850 feet in the heart of the Valais region\u2019s snowy peaks and pine forests, Crans-Montana is one of the top venues on the World Cup circuit. The town\u2019s Crans-sur-Sierre golf club stages the European Masters each August on a picturesque course.<\/p>\n
Swiss President Guy Parmelin said in a social media post that the government\u2019s \u201cthoughts go to the victims, to the injured and their relatives, to whom it addresses its sincere condolences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thursday was Parmelin\u2019s first day in office as the seven members of Switzerland\u2019s government take turns holding the presidency for one year. Out of respect for the families of the victims, he delayed a traditional New Year\u2019s address to the nation meant to be broadcast Thursday afternoon, Swiss broadcasters SRF and RTS reported.<\/p>\n
Keaten, Dazio and Leicester write for the Associated Press. 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\u00a0\u2014\u00a0About 40 people were killed and another 115 injured, most of them seriously, during a New Year\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[15017,59127,7213,217,62097,4544,3802,48,52,51,62099,47,50,49,62100,592,10263,62096,62098,36690,2601],"class_list":["post-116684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bar","tag-berlin","tag-blaze","tag-day","tag-dazio","tag-dozen","tag-fire","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-leicester","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-new-year-celebration","tag-people","tag-region","tag-regional-government","tag-swiss-alpine-resort","tag-switzerland","tag-victim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}