Swiss Nightclub Death Toll 40+, Investigation Turns to Indoor Fireworks
A basement bar fire at an upscale Swiss ski resort is now confirmed to have killed 40 people, and identifying the badly burned victims could take weeks.
Swiss authorities say “at least” 40 people died at the Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, with almost all of the 119 injured suffering serious burns, and around 80 are in absolutely critical condition and struggling with death. “Most” of the victims are aged 16 to 26, it is specified.
Police are investigating a possible case of negligent homicide, but have not made any arrests at the time of publication.
Speaking at the latest press conference on Friday, the regional attorney general (AG) confirmed that investigators were focusing on a sparkler-style firework served in a champagne bottle, sparking the deadly fire. Eyewitnesses and social media footage from the moment the fire started indicate that a waitress carrying a bottle of champagne with lit sparklers was being carried on the shoulders of a waiter and that upon raising her arms in the air, the bottle came into contact with the ceiling.
The AG declared: “Everything suggests that the fire started from the incandescent candles placed on the champagne bottles… They were brought too close to the ceiling, where a rapid and widespread fire occurred. »
Swiss newspaper Click notes that the AG said that sparklers themselves are not illegal and are widely available for purchase by the public, but that whether their use indoors was appropriate will be investigated.
Remarkably, the regional government claimed at the press conference that it did not know when the Le Constellation bar had last passed a safety inspection, but had not received any reports about it.
Dozens of the injured were flown to hospitals in neighboring European countries, including France and Germany, after the scale of the disaster exceeded Switzerland’s capacity. A Swiss hospital alone admitted 13 adults and eight children suffering from burns greater than 60 percent of their bodies. Identifying the dead and injured could take weeks, with the names of six of the seriously burned survivors still not known to authorities.
It was stated that “most people will require a long course of treatment and then need rehabilitation.”
Questions remain about how the fire was able to start so easily and spread so devastatingly. Promotional photos of Le Constellation bar shared on social media before the fire show the ceiling covered in what appears to be acoustic foam, to reduce noise from the party room disrupting the building above. It is towards this polyurethane acoustic foam that all attention is now turning.
The AG referred to this speculation in his remarks on Friday and said: “Of course, our investigation also includes ceiling foam. However, today I am not able to say with certainty whether it was compliant foam or not. Please refrain from speculating; let’s continue our work.”
Many residents testified that an explosion was heard during the fire, leading the government to deny that the fire was a terrorist attack early in the investigation. Local authorities said heat from the initial fire may have caused a flashover, which could explain the booming sound.
A flashover is the sudden, simultaneous combustion of anything flammable in a given space where a fire is already present. It is caused by the initial fire releasing a large amount of heat that has no way of escaping, causing a layer of heat to form on the ceiling of a room and anything flammable up there reaching its point of outgassing and spontaneous combustion. A fact sheet on flashovers produced by safety company Draeger says modern furnishing materials burn faster and hotter than in the past, making flashovers more likely, and that this phenomenon is the leading cause of firefighter deaths.
The presence of the distinctive gray “egg carton” foam on the Constellation’s ceilings inevitably invites a comparison with another deadly fire, the 2015 Colectiv nightclub fire in Bucharest, Romania, which killed 64 people. A pyrotechnic display on stage during a live music concert ignited polyurethane acoustic foam applied to the venue’s ceilings, causing a massive fire. The burning foam released toxic gases which poisoned many victims.
Although using flammable foam in this way is illegal in Romania, anger quickly turned against the government over the fire, as it was linked to a pervasive culture of corruption where it was believed that safety certificates could be acquired or ignored for entertainment venues for appropriate bribes. This anger brought down the then Romanian government in a few weeks.
