Around 40 people dead and 115 injured in fire at Swiss Alpine bar

About 40 people were killed and another 115 injured, most of them seriously, after a fire ripped through a new year celebration at a bar in a Swiss Alpine resort, police said.

Authorities did not immediately have an exact count of the deceased.

The Crans-Montana resort is best known as an international ski and golf venue, and overnight, its crowded Le Constellation bar morphed from a scene of revelry into the site of potentially one of Switzerland’s worst tragedies.

Valais Canton police commander Frederic Gisler said during a news conference that work was under way to identify the victims and inform their families, adding that the community was “devastated”.

Beatrice Pilloud, Valais Canton attorney general, said it was too early to determine the cause of the fire, which broke out less than two hours after midnight on Thursday. Experts had not yet been able to go inside the wreckage.

“At no moment is there a question of any kind of attack,” Ms Pilloud said.

She later said the number of people who were in the bar was “currently totally unknown”, adding that its maximum capacity would be part of the investigation.

“For the time being, we don’t have any suspect,” she said, when asked if anyone had been arrested over the fire.

“An investigation has been opened, not against anyone, but to illuminate the circumstances of this dramatic fire.”

Mr Gisler said the priority until further notice would be identifying the victims, and added that “this work will have to take several days”.

A 16-year-old from Paris who survived the blaze described “total chaos” inside the bar.

One of his friends died and “two or three were missing”, he told The Associated Press.

The teenager said he had not seen the fire start, but did see waitresses arrive with Champagne bottles with sparklers, he said.

He said he felt like he was suffocating and initially hid behind a table, then ran upstairs and tried to use a table to break an acrylic glass window. It fell out of its casing, allowing him to escape.

He lost his jacket, shoes, phone and bank card while fleeing, but “I am still alive and it’s just stuff”, he said.

“I’m still in shock,” he added.

Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV they were inside when they saw a male bartender lifting a female bartender on his shoulders as she held a lit candle in a bottle.

The flames spread, collapsing the wooden ceiling, they told the broadcaster.

One of the women described a crowd surge as people frantically tried to escape from a basement nightclub up a narrow flight of stairs and through a narrow door.

Another witness speaking to BFMTV described people smashing windows to escape the blaze, some gravely injured, and panicked parents rushing to the scene in cars to see whether their children were trapped inside.

The young man said he saw about 20 people scrambling to get out of the smoke and flames and likened what he saw to a horror movie as he watched from across the street.

Officials described how the blaze likely triggered the release of combustible gases that ignited violently and caused what firefighters call a flashover or backdraft.

“This evening should have been a moment of celebration and coming together, but it turned into a nightmare,” Mathias Reynard, head of the regional government of the Valais Canton, said.

The injured were so numerous that the intensive care unit and operating theatre at the regional hospital quickly hit full capacity, Mr Reynard said.

Crans-Montana is less than three miles (5km) from Sierre, Switzerland, where 28 people, including many children, were killed when a bus from Belgium crashed inside a Swiss tunnel in 2012.

In a region busy with tourists skiing on the slopes, the authorities have called on the local population to show caution in the coming days to avoid any accidents that could require medical resources that are already overwhelmed.

With high-altitude ski runs rising around 3,000 metres (nearly 9,850 feet) in the heart of the Valais region’s snowy peaks and pine forests, Crans-Montana is one of the top venues on the World Cup circuit.

The resort will host the best men’s and women’s downhill racers, including Lindsey Vonn, for their final events before the Milan Cortina Olympics in February.

The town’s Crans-sur-Sierre golf club stages the European Masters each August.

The Swiss blaze on Thursday came 25 years after a fire in the Dutch fishing town of Volendam on New Year’s Eve, which killed 14 people and injured more than 200 as they celebrated in a cafe.

Swiss president Guy Parmelin said in a social media post that the government’s “thoughts go to the victims, to the injured and their relatives, to whom it addresses its sincere condolences”.

Thursday was Mr Parmelin’s first day in office as the seven members of Switzerland’s government take turns holding the presidency for one year.

Out of respect for the families of the victims, he delayed a traditional New Year’s address to the nation meant to be broadcast on Thursday afternoon, Swiss broadcasters SRF and RTS reported.