Swiss bar fire: What ignited the blaze? Sparklers, foam material likely causes

Dozens of young partygoers hurt in a New Year's Eve bar fire in Switzerland were transferred to specialist burn units across Europe with serious injuries on Friday after being hit by the devastating blaze, which has killed at least 40.

Initial findings showed the fire that spread among the mostly young crowd of revellers in Le Constellation bar in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana was likely caused by sparkler candles being carried too close to the ceiling, the local prosecutor said.

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Meanwhile, investigators focused on the painful task of identifying the burned bodies, warning that this process was very sensitive and would take time.

Fire likely to be caused by party candles

The bodies of those killed have now all been removed from the bar, a Swiss official told Reuters. Police were still on site to continue investigations into the cause of the tragedy, which Swiss authorities said they were treating as a fire, not an attack.

Sparklers held under a foam-clad ceiling likely ignited a deadly blaze that killed 40 New Year's revellers in a Swiss ski bar, authorities said on Friday, but the bar owner insisted that all safety standards were followed.

Investigators working to get to the cause of the tragedy, which happened in the early hours of Thursday in the Swiss Alps resort town of Crans-Montana, have homed in on the party candles after viewing mobile phone footage and speaking to survivors.

The images, some posted online, were recorded by partygoers in Le Constellation bar and show sparklers, stuck in the top of champagne bottles held close to the basement bar's low ceiling, which was covered with soundproofing foam material.

Videos showed the material catching fire but the patrons, many of them in their late teens and 20s, kept dancing, unaware of the death trap they were in.

"Everything suggests that the fire started from sparklers or Bengal candles" waved high near the ceiling, the chief prosecutor of the Wallis region, Beatrice Pilloud, told a press conference.

Further investigations will show if anyone needs to be held criminally liable for negligence, she added.

Axel, who was in the basement where the fire started, told reporters he did not know how he "miraculously" made it out.

He turned over a table and hid behind it to protect himself from the fire, before making his way upstairs. "We couldn't see anything, I was half choking," he said. He used a table, and then his feet, to break a window to get out, avoiding what he said was a single door that was too narrow for the many people trying to escape.

Safety rules in focus

Jacques Moretti, the French owner who had run the bar since 2015 with his wife Jessica, insisted to Swiss daily the Tribune de Geneve that safety norms had been followed. "Everything was done according to the regulations," he said.

But Pilloud said the application of those standards was among the focuses of the investigation.

The Morettis — who escaped the fire unharmed — have been questioned as "witnesses", with no liability established at this stage, she said.

The exact number of people who were at the bar when it went up in flames remains unclear. The Crans-Montana website said the venue had a capacity of 300 people plus 40 on its terrace.

Given Crans-Montana's international popularity as a ski destination, foreigners were expected to be among the dead.

Among those bracing for the worst was Laetitia Brodard, who said that the last text she received from her 16-year-old son, Arthur, was "Mom, Happy New Year, I love you".

"It's been 40 hours. Forty hours since our children have disappeared. So we should know by now," she told journalists Friday near a makeshift memorial set up near the burnt-out shell of Le Constellation.

'Fighting for their lives'

So severe were the burns that Swiss officials said it could take days before they name all those killed in the fire. The official toll is 40 dead, while 119 have been injured, many of them very seriously. Those numbers are not final, officials said.

"Many of those injured are still fighting for their lives today," Valais area chief Mathias Reynard told a news conference.

Around 50 of the injured have been, or will be, transferred to burn units in hospitals elsewhere in Europe, he said. Germany and France are among the countries treating some of the injured.

Of the injured, 113 have been identified, 71 of whom are Swiss, 14 French and 11 Italian, four Serbian, one Bosnian, one Belgian, one Polish, one Portuguese and one Luxembourgish, police chief Frederic Gisler told the same news conference.

Desperate search

Emanuele Galeppini, a 16-year-old Italian international golfer who lived in Dubai, was the first victim to be identified publicly.

The Italian Golf Federation, which named the young Italian golfer as a victim, said it "mourns the passing of Emanuele Galeppini, a young athlete who carried with him passion and genuine values".

Parents and friends of missing youths issued pleas for news of their loved ones as foreign embassies scrambled to work out if their nationals were among those caught up in one of the worst tragedies to befall modern Switzerland.

Marco, a 20-year-old from Milan, told Reuters outside the Constellation bar that twenty of his friends were missing.

"Some of them are injured, in bad condition. Some of them are completely safe. And some of our friends, we don't have any news. They told us they never found them," he said. "Nobody can help us find our friends."

Authorities have warned that naming the victims or establishing a definitive death toll would take time because many of the bodies were badly burned.

"All this work needs to be done because the information is so terrible and sensitive that nothing can be told to the families unless we are 100 per cent sure," said Mathias Reynard, head of government of the canton of Valais. Experts were using dental and DNA samples to identify the victims, he said.