Swiss authorities have admitted fire safety inspections had not been carried out for the past five years at a bar where 40 people died in a New Year blaze.
The inferno at Le Constellation in the Swiss Alpine ski resort of Crans-Montana left 116 people injured, of whom 83 are still in various hospitals. Many of those killed were teenagers.
Prosecutors have said they believe the fire started when people celebrating the New Year raised champagne bottles with sparklers attached, setting light to sound-insulating foam on the ceiling of the basement bar.
Although inspections, including fire safety, were conducted in 2016, 2018 and 2019, “periodic inspections were not conducted between 2020 and 2025. We bitterly regret this”, Crans-Montana mayor Nicolas Feraud told a press conference, five days on from the disaster.
The law requires the municipal fire department to conduct annual inspections in establishments open to the public, he said, admitting that he did not know why the visits had not been carried out.
In a statement, the municipality said it discovered the failure after going through documents sent to the Wallis canton prosecutor’s office.
“The courts will determine the influence that such a failure had in the chain of events leading up to the tragedy. The municipality will assume full responsibility as determined by the courts,” the statement said.
The council said it would commission a specialist external agency to inspect all public establishments and would ban pyrotechnic devices indoors.
“The municipality of Crans-Montana remains fully committed to supporting the victims of this tragedy and their families and loved ones, who are constantly in its thoughts,” the statement said.
“It will continue to do everything in its power to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again.”
Romain Jordan, a lawyer who is representing several families, told AFP his clients “received with dismay” information from municipal authorities acknowledging failings in the fire safety checks.
“The staggering number of breaches and shortcomings in the inspections raises the question of whether the municipality should be investigated with even greater urgency,” he added.
And “we would have liked to hear an apology, especially five days after the incident”, Jordan added.
Sebastien Fanti, a lawyer representing four families of the injured, told AFP: “Taking responsibility is essential.”
Fanti said there were 128 public establishments that the municipality needed to inspect, and only 13 of them were bars.
“Normally, when addressing a risk, one always begins by inspecting the places where the risks could materialise,” he said.
“Le Constellation is one of the five highest-risk locations” in the municipality, he said.
Crans-Montana municipality has chosen to become a civil party in the proceedings, in order to gain access to the case file.
“For the municipality to try to portray itself as a victim amounts to stripping the true victims of this tragedy of their status, which is unacceptable,” said Jordan.
Of the 40 people killed, 26 were teenagers.
French couple Jacques and Jessica Moretti owned and managed Le Constellation, which was crammed with young partygoers when the blaze erupted at around 1.30am on Thursday.
A criminal investigation has been opened against the pair. They are charged with manslaughter by negligence, bodily harm by negligence and arson by negligence.
Le Constellation was established in 1967. Reports in the municipal files reference a capacity limit of 100 people on the ground floor and 100 in the basement, Tuesday’s statement said.
According to photos taken by the owners in 2015 during renovations that the municipality said “did not require a permit”, the sound insulation foam had been stuck on the ceiling since then.
A video filmed by a member of the public, screened on Monday by Swiss broadcaster RTS, showed that the danger was known years ago.
“Watch out for the foam!”, a bar employee said during 2019 New Year’s Eve celebrations, as champagne bottles with sparklers were brought out.
“The security chiefs who inspected this bar [between 2015 and 2020] should probably have been more careful,” admitted Feraud, who ruled out resigning for the time being.
“I will carry this burden and the sorrow of all these families for the rest of my life,” he concluded, visibly shaken.
The most severely burned survivors have been airlifted to specialist burns centres in Switzerland and abroad.
The average age of those killed was 19. Eight of the dead were aged under 16.
While the majority of those killed were Swiss, nine French and six Italian nationals were among the dead.
“This tragedy could have been avoided” and “should have been avoided through prevention and common sense”, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, Rome’s ambassador to Switzerland, said Monday.
Switzerland has declared a national day of mourning for Friday.
A memorial ceremony honouring the victims is planned in Martigny, down the Rhone valley from Crans-Montana, with French President Emmanuel Macron expected to attend.
All church bells in Switzerland were to toll at 2pm local time. A moment of silence is also planned.
The United Nations in Geneva will lower its flag to half-mast.
- Agence France-Presse