The fire disaster bar in Switzerland where 40 people died on New Year’s Eve had missed its annual fire and safety inspection every year for five years, it has been revealed as authorities open investigations into the nightclub’s owners.
At least 40 people died and 116 were injured, many critically, in a fire at the Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, a subterranean nightclub in Switzerland on New Year’s Eve. While the investigation into how the fire began continues, with a focus on miniature fireworks garnishing champagne bottles and the bar’s acoustic foam padded ceiling an early focus, a case has been opened against the bar’s owners for negligence.
German newspaper Die Welt states French citizen Jacques M., who co-owned the bar with his wife, has been revealed as having historic arrests and jail time in his native France for pimping and fraud. The couple are being investigated for involuntary homicide, involuntary bodily harm and involuntarily causing a fire.
Jacques M. has insisted in remarks to French media that the bar was operated legally and had been inspected “three times in ten years”.
The problem may be, as revealed by local government in the latest press conference since the deadly blaze, that those three inspections all took place before 2019, and far from three inspections in a decade being sufficient, all public buildings in the Swiss region have to be inspected for fire and safety once a year by law. Mayor Nicolas Féraud said he didn’t know how it was possible for so many inspections to be missed in a row and expressed his sorrow.
The mayor said: “we regret this bitterly… We did not have an indication that the checks had not been done”.
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