Fire at Swiss Alpine resort bar during New Year’s celebration leaves dozens feared dead, 100 injured

CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland (AP) — A fire ripped through a bar’s New Year celebration in a Swiss Alpine resort less than two hours after midnight Thursday, with dozens of people feared dead and about 100 more injured, most seriously, police said.

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’s worst tragedies.

“Several tens of people” were presumed killed at the bar, Valais Canton police commander Frédéric Gisler said during a news conference.

Work is under way to identify the victims and inform their families, but “that will take time and for the time being, it is premature to give you a more precise figure,” Gisler said, adding that the community is “devastated.”

Beatrice Pilloud, Valais Canton attorney general, said it was too early to determine the cause of the fire.

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Experts have not yet been able to go inside the wreckage.

“At no moment is there a question of any kind of attack,” Pilloud said.

Helicopters and ambulances rushed to the scene to assist victims, including some from different countries, officials said.

Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV that they were inside when they saw a barman carrying a barmaid on his shoulders.

The barmaid was holding a lit candle in a bottle that set fire to the wooden ceiling. The flames quickly spread and collapsed the ceiling, they told the broadcaster.

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.

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.

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.

“This evening should have been a moment of celebration and coming together, but it turned into a nightmare,” said Mathias Reynard, head of the regional government of the Valais Canton.

The injured were so numerous that the intensive care unit and operating theatre at the regional hospital quickly hit full capacity, Reynard said.