Around 40 people were killed and over 100 injured when a fire ripped through a crowded bar in the luxury Swiss ski resort town of Crans-Montana as young revellers rang in the new year, police said Thursday. Horrified bystanders described “panic” as people tried to break through the windows of the bar to escape, and others, covered in burns, poured into the street. Frederic Gisler, police commander in the Wallis canton in southwestern Switzerland, told reporters that authorities had counted “around 40 people who have died and around 115 injured, most of them seriously”.
Guy Parmelin, who took over the Swiss presidency on Thursday, told reporters the fire was “one of the worst tragedies that our country has experienced”. “People were running through the flames. People were using chairs to try to break the windows.” Two young French women, Emma and Albane, told French broadcaster BFMTV that they had been able to escape the “panic” in the bar shortly after the fire broke out.
They said “birthday candles” placed on champagne bottles had got too close to the ceiling. “Seconds later, the entire ceiling was burning,” one of them told the broadcaster, estimating that there were around 200 people in the venue at the time, mainly aged between 15 and 20.
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