Le Constellation bar fire in Switzerland: what we know so far

What happened?

The fire raged through Le Constellation at about 1.30am (0030 GMT) as revellers in the packed bar were ringing in the new year.

“The party was in full swing … music and champagne flowing freely,” a local resident told 24 heures, a Lausanne newspaper.

Ambulances were parked outside the bar hours later and broken windows could be seen while the ground floor of the bar was strewn with abandoned shoes. Local media described a “smell of burning still in the air”.

A tourist from New York filmed bright orange flames leaping from the bar, and told Agence France-Presse he had seen people running and screaming in the dark.

A witness speaking to the French broadcaster BFMTV described people breaking windows to escape the blaze, some badly injured, and panicked parents rushing to the scene in cars to see whether their children were trapped inside.

The young man said he had seen about 20 people scrambling to get out and likened the scene to a “horror movie” as it unfolded across the street.

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

How many people were hurt?

The police have said about 40 people are believed to have died and about 115 were injured in the blaze. Many of the victims were in their teens and 20s, officials said.

Witnesses described a crowd surge as people frantically tried to escape from a basement nightclub up a narrow flight of stairs and through a small doorway. Investigators said they would work to determine whether fire safety protocols had been maintained. Le Constellation had a maximum capacity of about 300 people.

The hospitals in Valais canton were full and had declared a state of emergency, with the injured being transported to various hospitals across Switzerland. Some patients may need to be sent to clinics in neighbouring countries, officials said.

Helicopters and ambulances were sent to the scene to assist victims who were from several countries, officials said. The intensive care unit and operating room at the regional hospital quickly hit full capacity, Reynard said.

Sixteen Italians have been reported missing, while around a dozen more Italian nationals are being treated in hospital following the blaze, Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani said.

Lausanne University Hospital, which was treating the most severely injured among the victims, said the 22 patients in its care were aged between 16 and 26.

Axel Clavier, a 16-year-old from Paris, survived the blaze by using a table to push a plexiglass window out of its casing, allowing him to escape the “total chaos” inside the bar where he said he felt like he was suffocating.

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.

Unverified video showed several sparklers burning from bottles as the waitstaff entered the room.

What caused it?

Investigators said it was too early to determine the cause of the fire as experts had not been able to go inside the wreckage. However, officials said there was no sign of terrorism or arson.

“At no moment is there a question of any kind of attack,” said Beatrice Pilloud, the public prosecutor of the Valais canton.

Officials called the blaze that raged through the crowded bar an “embrasement généralisé”, a firefighting term describing how a fire can trigger the release of combustible gases that can then ignite violently and cause what English-speaking firefighters would call a flashover or a backdraft.

The municipality of 10,000 residents had banned New Year’s Eve fireworks owing to a lack of rainfall in the past month, according to its website.

Two women later told BFMTV they had been inside when they saw a barman carrying a female server on his shoulders who was holding a lit candle in a bottle that set fire to the wooden ceiling. The flames quickly spread and caused the ceiling to collapse, they said.

A picture posted on social media showed a woman in a black dress holding a magnum of champagne in the basement of the bar. A large white flame could be seen coming from the top of the bottle.

Unverified video footage showed the ceiling of the basement nightclub in flames as patrons fled the scene.