At 1:30 am on New Year’s Day, the call came in at the firefighter station that there was a fire at Le Constellation. Le Constellation is a bar in the Swiss Alps in the town of Crans-Montana. I, myself, have been in this town to ski and have walked in the streets of the village.
When I first heard the news, while being thousands of miles away from home and from the situation, I just hoped I wouldn’t know any of the victims. I spent a year in Lausanne, where people are likely to go partying in Crans-Montana because they speak French. Because of the language, I knew the possibility was high that I would know someone, especially because the victims are mostly my age.
I opened Instagram and Snapchat to check if my friends had posted what they were doing on New Year’s Eve. I was more than relieved seeing that my close friends were all at different locations and weren’t involved. During the day and the following days, though, I saw multiple people asking on Instagram if someone had seen their friends, children and family members. I can’t even imagine being a parent and not knowing where my child is, if they’re still alive, if they’re in a hospital in or outside of the country. The tragedy of this event is not even imaginable. Switzerland’s Federal president, Guy Parmelin, called it “one of Switzerland’s worst tragedies.”
A friend of mine, Charlotte Garo, goes to a sports school in Lausanne, and lost one of her classmates in the fire.
“In the first days, when I saw the missing-person notices, and later the death confirmation, it completely broke my heart,” Charlotte said. “I feel lost about what I’m feeling, and I can’t really put it into words. I think I still can’t fully realize that he will truly never come back. Monday was especially hard. We even saw teachers crying, which is rare, even though it’s very human. The teachers don’t really know how to act either.”
Her school was affected by the loss of four students. A teacher my friend’s school lost her daughter. At Charlotte’s sister’s school, they experienced ten deaths and many injuries. Charlotte’s school is providing five psychological therapists, who are helping process this tragedy. In addition, the state of Vaud announced that the school year won’t have as high a value for the students as usual, because of the trauma many students experience.
Le Constelation was known as a local bar for young people. It was full, and the identity check was apparently not taken that seriously. The youngest victim was 14 years old, and the oldest was 33. The question I ask myself is, “How did a 14-year-old get into the bar?” The age limit to drink in Switzerland is 16 for beer and light alcohol and 18 for stronger alcohol.
According to the police, they believe the blaze started from a small firework stuck in a bottle of champagne. A server was sitting on the shoulders of another one, holding the bottle with the fireworks and sparkling candles in the air while dancing and celebrating through the club. The party was downstairs in a basement, and the ceiling was covered with foam to improve the sound quality. Foam is highly flammable, and as soon as the firework touched the ceiling, the foam began to burn immediately. The airflow directed the fire upstairs quickly, which blocked the only emergency exit. At the same time, the foam was melting and fell to the floor while it was on fire. The stairs in the club were wide but narrowed as you went upstairs. This created mass panic because everyone wanted to get out as soon as possible, but they were trapped in the basement. Survivors talked about burning bodies lying on the floor, people with no clothes on fire.
In total, there were 40 victims and 116 injured. The number of deaths will possibly still rise, though, because of the immense burns the victims have. Up to 60% of the skin has been burned for some patients. Most of them are in an artificial coma now. Some perspective — if 20% of an adult’s body that’s equal to a leg or both arms. With a second-degree burn, the patient is considered seriously injured, and the injury is life-threatening. The victims of Crans-Montana are mostly burned with more than second-degree burns and on big surfaces. The injured were transported to hospitals all around the country, as well as to foreign hospitals in Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy.
The question that also comes up is who is liable for the disaster?
According to a Swiss attorney, the compensation, meaning the money that must be paid to put the injured person in the position they would have been in if the accident had never happened —covering medical expenses, household costs, and loss of income during the period in which the victim is unable to work— would men “that, in individual cases, liability claims can quickly amount to several hundred thousand Swiss francs.”
Plus, there will be compensation for pain and suffering, but in Switzerland this won’t be very much compared to the United States. In America, you could claim millions of dollars, while in Switzerland, in case of a death, a person’s family can only claim $25-$40,000.
Following archive searches, it has now also come to light that there was a gap in the annual safety inspections at the bar. Between 2019 and 2025, the venue Le Constellation was not inspected. The municipality cannot explain why this did not take place.
This tragic event is one of the most devastating in Swiss history and made international news. My thoughts are with the families and close ones of the victims. May this catastrophe never be forgotten.
Photocredit: Ringier Media Switzerland – Blick.ch
