Victims of the disastrous bar fire in the luxury Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana are under special burns treatment in special burns units spread throughout Europe, and investigators estimate that many of the casualties were so severely burnt that their identity could be established only after days or even weeks.
The fire that swept a New Year’s Eve party in the overcrowded Le Constellation bar and basement nightclub killed about 40 people and injured 119 others. The fire was started with the help of sparkling candles or sparklers placed on bottles of champagne and moved too close to the ceiling, which is believed by investigators to be the cause.
The mayor of Crans-Montana, Nicolas Feraud, said: “The first goal is to give names to everybody.”
Swiss President, Guy Parmelin, referred to the fire as a disaster of such an appalling scale as has never been seen before during the description of the disastrous cost. “Hanging behind these figures are faces, names, families, lives which have been brutally cut short, severed altogether, forever changed,” Parmelin said at a news conference.
The burns suffered by the victims were so serious that the Swiss officials indicated that the identification work was quite brutal. Parents of missing youths made pleas for the whereabouts of their families, and foreign embassies scrambled to devise ways of determining whether their countrymen were among those who had been carried along in one of the greatest tragedies to have befallen modern Switzerland.
According to Mathias Reynard, the government head of the canton of Valais, “experts were employing dental records and DNA samples to do the job. This and all must be done because the news is so horrible and secret that we can not tell the families anything, unless we know there is no doubt about it.”
Although it has one of the most sophisticated medical systems in the world, it was soon overwhelmed by the number of people who needed treatment in the regional clinics of Switzerland, a few hours after the fire. A Swiss news agency reported that more than 30 of them were taken to hospitals in Zurich and Lausanne with specialised burns units and six to Geneva.
Numerous additional casualties were taken to other nations such as Belgium, France, Poland, and Germany, whereas the EU reported it was in touch with the Swiss government regarding offering medical support.
French President Emmanuel Macron told X he had offered his country’s assistance as Paris and Lyon clinics accepted patients, and Sweden and North Macedonia also reported having plenty of bed space.
According to Valais police chief Fr Frederic Gisler, 119 victims of injuries had been officially identified, and six were unknown.
“There are 71 Swiss, 14 French citizens, 11 Italians, four Serbs, and one individual each of Bosnia, Belgium, Luxembourg, Poland, and Portugal. There is no confirmation of the nationalities of 14 out of the injured.”
“Some of the countries that have reported their nationals missing include Italy and France. One of its nationals was wounded,” Australia has alleged.
An Instagram account served as the main hub of information sources to the families and friends of those who have not been contacted since Thursday. Over 40 pictures were put up by Friday afternoon.
One of the French citizens, Paulo Martins, who has stayed in the region near Crans-Montana province, reported that his son and his girlfriend almost missed the fire as they were in the bar. Martins told Agence France-Presse that when he came home, he was in shock.
“One of his 17-year-old sons had been taken to Germany to be treated with his body 30% burnt,” Martins said.
Eleonore, 17, spent the first day of the year madly searching for friends who had not been heard of since the fire. She was standing outside the bar, which was now covered by white tarpaulins and a wall of temporary barriers, when she said that she had not been in contact with them since New Year’s Eve.
According to AFP, she took dozens of photographs and posted them on Instagram, Facebook, and all of the social networks possible, in their attempts to locate them. “But there’s nothing. No response. We called the parents. Nothing. Even the parents don’t know.”
She and a friend were able to receive the news that one of her friends was in a coma in a Lausanne hospital.
Claire Charmet, the head of the hospital that is run by the university in the city, said that it was attending to 22 severely burnt patients, the majority of whom were aged between 16 and 26.
She informed the local newspaper 24 heures on Thursday, “patients are being stabilised and either delivered to the operating theatre or to specialised beds. We must realize that any such treatment will be a long and severe one, and that it will require weeks or months.”
Eric Bonvin, the overall manager of the local hospital at Sion, reported that it received several dozen injured individuals, and their average age was approximately 20. He narrated how employees were supported by other employees who had not been assigned to attend to work but reported giving them a hand.
He also said that he hoped that the youth of the survivors would accelerate their healing: They are young, and that means they still have a lot of vitality, he told the Associated Press.
