Isra, Matteo and Leon went out on the 31st to celebrate the end of the year. They wanted to have gone to the Le Constellation bar to meet some of their friends, but it was full and there was no room, so they finally headed to the central square of Crans-Montana, a bucolic village in the Alps next to a ski resort in the canton of Valais, southern Switzerland. At dawn, in the place where these boys were, a rumor spread that . They approached, as they were a few meters away. “We saw fire, many ambulances, people burned in the street and others running in all directions,” says Isra, 16 years old.
The tragedy has shaken this town, where the lights on the Christmas trees still shine, but where late this Thursday afternoon dozens of people, many of them teenagers, came in silence with bouquets of flowers to pay tribute to those encrypted so far by the authorities.
Le Constellation, a bar run by two Frenchmen originally from Corsica, is an establishment especially “for young people, 15 or 16”, testimonies agree, so many had a friend inside. It is the place where a whole generation of kids has gone to have fun before reaching the age of majority. The three friends, who live in a nearby town, have some “who are in the hospital with burns and one in an artificial coma.” “You have just been transferred to the hospital in the French city of Lyon,” Matteo warns them after receiving a call. There is another friend who they have no news about.
The year that began has ended in the most abrupt way possible in Crans-Montana, both for the neighbors and for those who have a secondary residence and had gone to spend the holidays. This is the case of Alessio and James, who live in the Swiss city of Lausanne. They arrived on the 31st and on Thursday afternoon they were around the bar to pay tribute to the victims, including some friends whose fate they do not know.
They used to frequent the place when they were young, but “when we are 20 we go to other places,” they say. They left the bar they were in to meet some friends who were left inside the burned bar. Through tears, James tells what he saw: “People were screaming as if they were going to die, they were running everywhere and breaking the windows, it was real chaos. There were people lying on the ground.”
“We have many friends who were there and about whom we have no news. We don’t know if they burned inside,” says this 20-year-old young man. “You cannot describe what we saw and what happened. It is not normal for something to happen here, in a place in Switzerland, where we have a certain security,” says Alessio.
Justine and her sister Flavia, who live in the nearby town of Sierre, were supposed to have left after the bell. “In the end I didn’t do it and I stayed in the town. My lucky star told me not to come,” says the second. At five in the morning a friend called her to tell her what had happened. He has another acquaintance in the hospital, with burns, but “she will get through it.” His mother participated in the rescue efforts and his stepfather is one of the firefighters in the extensive device formed to put out the flames.
The Le Constellation bar has capacity for about 300 people. “It is true that it is a somewhat gloomy place, where you can feel trapped,” explains Gabriella, another 15-year-old teenager, a resident of the area, who has also left flowers. The authorities keep the street where the nightclub is located cordoned off.
Crans-Montana, at 1,500 meters above sea level, has a ski resort and has about 10,000 inhabitants. Bernard Schumacher is French and has a home there: “It is a very happy season, with good snow, full of life. Last night I woke up because I heard helicopter noise, but I found out this morning. People come here to celebrate. Nobody expected an accident like this in Crans-Montana. We have been traumatized by what happened all morning. We always celebrate the New Year here, but this one doesn’t start well,” he said yesterday afternoon.
He also wonders if in this bar “the security measures could have failed. Although zero risk does not exist, these are young people who have been trapped by the smoke and flames,” he points out.
