Disbelief as fire exploded inside Swiss bar: 'We thought it was a joke'

Le Constellation, a two-storey bar with a glass-enclosed terrace, was still packed with partygoers, many of them teenagers.

Witnesses reported seeing a staff member, who was sitting on the shoulders of a colleague, carrying bottles with fizzing candle-style sparklers in the basement section shortly before the ceiling caught fire.

A video shared on social media and verified by Reuters shows a young man using his shirt to try to beat back flames that are beginning to form in the ceiling as others record the scene on their phones. Loud music plays in the background.

"We thought it was a joke, or that it wasn't necessarily serious," said Axel Clavier, a teenager who was in the basement with friends when the fire started.

Moments later, there was a huge cloud of black smoke, Clavier told the Swiss news agency Keystone. "We couldn't breathe anymore."

It all happened in seconds, said Julia, a 19-year-old from the Swiss city of Lausanne who did not want to give her last name. Panic ensued.

"People just suddenly started running and walking on top of each other," she told Reuters, fighting back tears. "There was an enormous crowd, and this really small entrance, and it was hard to escape."

She was on the ground floor and escaped with an injured foot. A friend, who was with her, got caught in the flames that tore through from the basement and ended up in hospital with severe burns, she said.

At least 40 people were killed and 119 injured in the inferno, said Swiss officials in the southwestern canton of Valais, an "unprecedented" toll in a resort known for panoramic Alpine views and sporting attractions like skiing and golf.

Initial investigations suggest the blaze started when the so-called fountain candles attached to champagne bottles got too close to the ceiling, local prosecutor Beatrice Pilloud told a news conference on Friday. "From there, a rapid, very rapid and widespread conflagration ensued."

Questions have also arisen about a foam material that may have been used to soundproof the ceiling of the basement where revellers danced to rap music.

 The investigation will focus on renovations that were made to the bar and the materials used, the fire extinguishing systems and escape routes, as well as the number of people in the building when the blaze started, she said.

Swiss prosecutors said on Saturday they have placed the bar's two managers under investigation on suspicion of homicide by negligence and other crimes. Reuters could not immediately reach them for comment.

The Swiss newspaper Tribune de Geneve quoted one of the owners, Jacques Moretti, as saying the bar had been inspected three times in the past 10 years, and "everything was done according to the rules."

Reuters interviewed more than a dozen witnesses, including three survivors, and reviewed multiple videos and pictures to piece together what unfolded in the early hours of New Year's Day.

A Popular Local Hangout

Known locally as "Le Constel", the bar was a popular evening hangout for foreign students and local teenagers, who in Switzerland are allowed to buy beer and wine from the age of 16.

"It's a bar where we'd go for our first outings when we were 16 or 17," said 21-year-old Samuel Rapp, who was at a Mexican restaurant next door when the fire broke out. "We'd go there because you can play pool; we'd play darts."

The night of the fire, witnesses described lines out the door with some people turned away because they had not booked tables.

One young survivor, who gave his name only as Nathan, said the display with the sparklers seemed to be a regular attraction."We were there the night before, and there was a table next to us that had the same show," he told Keystone.

A promotional video for the bar also showed people carrying bottles of champagne with fizzing sparklers at the venue.

Moretti acquired the bar with his wife in 2015, Swiss company records show. It was substantially refurbished since then, according to witness accounts and local media reports at the time.

Witnesses described a single stairwell leading from the basement to the enclosed terrace, with a small door at the end, where desperate people trying to escape from both floors became trapped. It was not immediately clear whether there were other emergency exits.

Laetitia Place, 17, said she had just entered the basement area expecting to meet friends when the fire exploded and raced across the ceiling.

"I saw a friend of mine, and then we saw the fire, and we went straight back up," she told Reuters.

"The first stairs are pretty easy to get through since they're wide," she said. "But after that, there's the small door where everyone was pushing, and so we all fell. We were piled on top of each other; some people were burning, and some were dead next to us."

Clavier, who was also in the basement, said he got blocked by a mass of people. He described pushing over a table so he could shield behind it from the heat as he waited for the crowd to thin out.

"We couldn't see anything at all, as there was no light," he told reporters on Friday. "There was one door of 1.5 meters (4.9 ft) wide for some two or three hundred people to get out. The people fell, and they suffocated."

Others described seeing people trapped inside banging on the reinforced glass until it yielded. Clavier said he managed to break out after striking a window with a table and kicking it.

Emergency responders arrived at the scene in minutes, police said, but the fire spread so quickly that for many, it was too late. Improvised triage centres were set up in nearby cafes.

"We saw people burnt without any hair, without clothes because they were so burnt," said Jérémy Halna, a 22-year-old student who was visiting from France and said he helped some of those emerging from the flames into the freezing night.

A Deadly 'Flashover'

 Many in the town described an agonising search for friends lost in the scramble and children who never returned from their night out.

The fire burned victims so severely that investigators said they would need days to identify the bodies.

 "I don't know if he is even recognisable," said Laetitia Brodard-Sitre, whose 16-year-old son, Arthur, sent her a New Year's text message from Le Constellation about an hour before the fire started.

"All that I want is to find my son and be close to him, whether he be alive or dead," she said.

Fire safety experts interviewed by Reuters said the evidence points to a familiar scenario: blazes ignited by indoor fireworks and other pyrotechnics have claimed hundreds of lives at bars and nightclubs.

"Nightclubs are not fire-safety friendly places," said Milad Haghani, associate professor of urban resilience and mobility at the University of Melbourne. He noted the danger of flammable soundproofing insulation, commonly found in such disasters.

When flammable surfaces ignite in confined spaces, a so-called "flashover" can occur, where nearly everything in a room explodes into flames at once.

"The fire will look for oxygen in order to grow; that's its physical mechanism," said Olivier Burnier, a partner in Swiss fire safety consultancy Fire Safety & Engineering SA. "That's why we had what people described as an explosion."

 Under Swiss law, any venue holding more than 100 people must have at least two 90-centimetre (35.4-inch) exits, he said. For those holding over 200, one exit must be 90 centimetres and the other at least 120 centimetres.

Pilloud, the prosecutor, said investigators would be looking into the safety measures at the bar, including exits and fire extinguishers.

One person familiar with the establishment, who asked not to be identified, said a water sprinkler system was installed by the previous owner. Reuters could not determine whether such a system was operating the night of the fire. At least one witness said she saw no sign of one as she fled the building.