Swiss bar fire LIVE Updates: The massive fire that occurred at a bar in Switzerland’s Crans Montana municipality has led to the death of 40 individuals while 115 were injured in the incident. The entire area has been cordoned off and authorities have imposed a no-fly zone over Crans Montana, as per a statement issued by local police on Thursday.
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.
Officials have not yet ascertained the cause of the fire, but media reports suggest pyrotechnics to be behind the incident. A local police spokesperson said, “More than a hundred people were in the building, and we are seeing many injured and many dead,” adding, “We’re just at the beginning of our investigation, but this is an internationally renowned ski resort with lots of tourists.”
What survivors said
Axel Clavier, a 16-year-old from Paris who survived the blaze, described “total chaos” inside the bar. One of his friends died and “two or three were missing,” he told The Associated Press,
He said he hadn’t seen the fire start, but did see waitresses arrive with Champagne bottles with sparklers, he said.
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 Plexiglas window. It fell out of its casing, allowing him to escape.
He lost his jacket, shoes, phone and bank card while fleeing, but “I am still alive and it’s just stuff.”
“I’m still in shock,” he added.
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.
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.
