CRANS-MONTANA: Sixteen-year-old Arthur Brodard had gone to the Le Constellation bar with friends to celebrate the New Year. Nearly 48 hours after a devastating fire, his mother still clung to the hope that he might be among the six injured people who remained unidentified after one of Switzerland’s worst tragedies.
Those half-dozen unidentified victims offered a glimmer of hope to families searching for loved ones after the fire at the Alpine ski resort of Crans-Montana, which killed 40 people and injured 119 others. Of the injured, 113 have been formally identified.
“I’m looking everywhere. The body of my son is somewhere,” Laetitia Brodard of Lausanne told reporters. “I want to know where my child is and be by his side, whether that is in the intensive care unit or the morgue.”
The severity of the burns has made it difficult to identify both the injured and the deceased, forcing families to provide DNA samples. In several cases, wallets and identification documents were reduced to ash. An Instagram account has been flooded with photographs of those unaccounted for, as friends and relatives pleaded for information about their whereabouts.
Officials in the Valais regional government acknowledged the prolonged anguish faced by families.
“You will understand that the priority today is truly identification, so that families can begin their mourning,” said Beatrice Pilloud, the region’s attorney general, at a news conference on Friday.
Mathias Reynard, head of the regional government, added: “We are aware of these particularly difficult hours, of the unbearable nature of every minute that passes without answers.”
Investigators said on Friday they believe sparkling candles placed atop champagne bottles ignited the deadly fire when they came too close to the ceiling of the crowded bar, around two hours after midnight on Thursday.
“We were bringing people out. People were collapsing. We were doing everything we could to save them,” said Marc-Antoine Chavanon, 14, who rushed to help the injured. “We saw people screaming and running. One of our friends was struggling to get out. She was badly burned. You can’t imagine the pain I saw.”
Police said many of the injured were in their teens and early 20s. Authorities are examining whether sound-dampening material on the ceiling complied with safety regulations and whether the use of candles was permitted. Other safety measures, including fire extinguishers and escape routes, are also under scrutiny. The region’s top prosecutor warned that prosecutions could follow if criminal liability is established.
According to Valais police commander Frédéric Gisler, the injured included 71 Swiss nationals, 14 French and 11 Italians, along with citizens of Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal and Poland. The nationalities of 14 people remained unclear.
Emanuele Galeppini, a promising teenage Italian golfer who competed internationally, was officially listed among Italy’s missing nationals. His uncle, Sebastiano Galeppini, told Italian news agency ANSA that the family was awaiting DNA results, although the Italian Golf Federation announced on its website that he had died.