Families face agonising wait as investigators work to identify at least 40 people killed, many others wounded in blaze.
Initial investigations suggest that sparklers attached to champagne bottles may have ignited the devastating fire that ripped through a Swiss ski resort bar on New Year’s Eve, killing more than three dozen people, the local prosecutor says.
“Everything suggests that the fire started from the burning candles or ‘Bengal lights’ that had been attached to champagne bottles,” prosecutor Beatrice Pilloud said during a news conference on Friday.
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“These went too close to the ceiling. From there, a rapid, very rapid and widespread conflagration ensued,” Pilloud told reporters.
At least 40 people were killed and 119 others wounded in the blaze that broke out at the crowded Le Constellation bar in the Swiss Alps town of Crans-Montana in the early hours of Thursday.
The deadly fire has prompted an outpouring of grief among residents, tourists and survivors, many of whom are still seeking information about missing friends and loved ones.
Reporting from Crans-Montana on Friday afternoon, Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull said people have been bringing flowers and lighting candles at a memorial to the victims.
“[There is] real sadness on the face of so many people,” said Hull, describing the town as a “place of collective grief and mourning”.
“Just down the road over there, you can see white, plastic sheeting surrounding Le Constellation bar … obscuring the work of forensic investigators going about the painstaking task of identifying around 40 bodies,” he added.
As families faced an agonising wait for information, Swiss officials said on Friday that 113 of 119 people injured in the fire had been identified.
They included 14 French nationals, 11 Italians and four Serbian nationals, said Frederic Gisler, the police commander in the Valais region where Crans-Montana is located.
Authorities also said about 50 people had been sent or would be transferred to other European countries for treatment in specialised burn units.
‘Like a small village’
Meanwhile, an Instagram account has filled up with photos of people who remain unaccounted for, with their friends and relatives begging for tips about the whereabouts of the missing.
“The atmosphere is heavy,” Dejan Bajic, a 56-year-old tourist from Geneva who has been coming to the resort for decades, told the AFP news agency.
“It’s like a small village; everyone knows someone who knows someone who’s been affected.”
Marco, a 20-year-old from the Italian city of Milan, told the Reuters news agency outside Le Constellation that 20 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-percent sure,” said Mathias Reynard, head of government of the canton of Valais.
Experts were using dental and DNA samples to identify the victims, he added.
Pilloud, the prosecutor, also said on Friday that the owners of the bar have been questioned as part of the ongoing investigation into the cause of the fire.
The probe will focus on previous renovations to the bar and the materials used, the availability of adequate fire extinguishing systems and escape routes, as well as the number of people who were in the bar when the fire started.
Pilloud said further investigations would determine whether there were grounds for criminal liability.