The fire at a basement bar in an upscale Swiss ski resort is now confirmed to have killed 40 people, with identification of the badly burned casualties potentially to take weeks.
Swiss authorities say “at least” 40 people died in the Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, with almost all of the 119 injured having suffered serious burn injuries, with some 80 in absolutely critical state and battling death. “Most” casualties are aged 16 to 26, it is stated.
Police are investigating a potential case of negligent homicide but have made no arrests at the time of publication.
Speaking at the latest press conference on Friday, the regional Attorney General (AG) confirmed investigators were focussing on a sparkler-type firework being served in a champagne bottle starting the deadly fire. Eyewitnesses and social media footage of the moment the fire began states a waitress carrying a bottle of champagne with lit sparklers was being carried on the shoulders of a waiter, and by lifting her arms to the air the bottle came into contact with the ceiling.
The AG said: “Everything suggests that the fire started from the incandescent candles placed on champagne bottles… They were brought too close to the ceiling, from where a rapid and widespread conflagration occurred.”
Swiss newspaper Blick notes the AG said the sparklers themselves are not illegal and are widely available to buy by the public, but whether their use indoors was proper will be investigated.
Remarkably, the regional government claimed at the press conference that they didn’t know when the Le Constellation bar last passed a safety inspection, but that they hadn’t received any reports against it.
Of the injured, dozens have been flown to hospitals in neighbouring European countries including France and Germany after the scale of the disaster overwhelmed Switzerland’s provision. One Swiss hospital alone took 13 adults and eight children suffering greater than 60-per-cent body burns. Identification of the dead and wounded may take weeks, with the names of six of the badly burned survivors still not known to authorities.
It was stated that “most people will require lengthy treatment and will then need rehabilitation”.
Questions remain over how the fire was able to start so easily and spread so devastatingly. Promotional pictures of the Le Constellation bar shared to social media before the fire show the ceiling covered with what appears to be acoustic foam, to reduce sound coming from the party venue disturbing the building above. It is to this polyurethane acoustic foam that much attention now turns.
The AG referred to this speculation in his remarks Friday and said: “Of course, our investigation also includes the foam on the ceiling. However, today I am not in a position to say with certainty whether it was compliant or non-compliant foam. Please refrain from speculating; let us get on with our work.”
Many locals testified there was an explosion heard during the fire, leading to the government to issue a denial the fire had been a terror attack early in the investigation. Now the local authorities have said the heat released by the initial blaze may have caused a flashover, which might explain the sound of a boom.
A flashover is the sudden, simultaneous combustion of anything flammable in a given space where a fire is already present. It is caused by the initial fire releasing a large amount of heat that has no route to escape, causing a layer of heat to build at the ceiling of a room, and anything flammable up there reaching its point of of-gassing and spontaneous combustion. A factsheet on flashovers produced by safety company Draeger states that modern furnishing materials burn faster and hotter than in the past, making flashovers more likely, and that the phenomenon is the leading cause of death of firefighters.
The presence of the distinctive grey “egg-carton” foam on the ceilings Le Constellation inevitably invites comparison to another deadly blaze, the 2015 Colectiv nightclub fire in Bucharest, Romania which killed 64. A pyrotechnics display on-stage during a live music concert ignited polyurethane acoustic foam applied to the ceilings of the venue, causing a massive fire. The burning foam released toxic gas which poisoned many victims.
While using flammable foam in this way was illegal in Romania, anger quickly turned on the government over the fire as it was linked to a pervasive corruption culture where it was perceived safety certificates could be acquired or overlooked for entertainment venues with appropriate bribery. This anger brought down the then-Romanian government within weeks.
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