CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland — Sixteen-year-old Arthur Brodard went to the Le Constellation bar with friends to celebrate the New Year. Nearly 48 hours after a devastating fire, his mother still held out hope he might be one of the several injured people who remained unidentified after one of Switzerland's worst tragedies.
Those people gave a glimmer of hope for families whose loved ones were missing in the aftermath of the fire at the Alpine ski resort of Crans-Montana that killed 40 people and injured more than 100 others.
“I’m looking everywhere. The body of my son is somewhere,” Laetitia Brodard, from Lausanne, Switzerland, told reporters. “I want to know where my child is and be by his side. Wherever that may be, be it in the intensive care unit or the morgue.”
Brodard said she received a message from her son just after midnight saying “Happy New Year, mom, I love you,” and she replied “Happy New Year, big guy, have a good time.” That was their last contact.
The severity of the burns has made it difficult to identify both the injured and deceased, requiring families to supply authorities with DNA samples. In some cases, wallets and any identification documents inside were turned to ash in the flames. An Instagram account has filled up with photos of people who were unaccounted for, and friends and relatives begged for tips about their whereabouts.
A nerve-wracking wait
On Saturday, regional police said the bodies of four victims — a boy and a girl, both aged 16, an 18-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman, all of them Swiss citizens — had been identified and handed over to their families. They said the identification of other victims, injured and deceased, was pressing on, and gave no further information.
“It's a wait that destroys people's stability,” said Elvira Venturella, an Italian psychologist working with the families of those who were at the bar. “And the more time passes, the more difficult it becomes to accept the uncertainty, not having information.”
Swiss officials acknowledged the prolonged heartache.
"The priority today is truly placed on identification, in order to allow the families to begin their mourning,” Beatrice Pilloud, the Valais region's attorney general, told reporters Friday during a news conference.
Swiss officials said Friday afternoon that 119 people were injured, 113 of whom had been formally identified.
On Saturday, Italy's ambassador to Switzerland, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, told reporters he had just been briefed by local authorities that the total number of injured stood at 121, five of whom hadn't yet been identified. He said 14 Italians were being treated in hospitals.
“There's a lot of stress because the wait is long, because the silence is terrible to stand, because of the lack of information, which is inevitable in those circumstances,” Cornado said. He stressed that it was right for authorities to have a “strict procedure” and share information only when it is “accurate and 100% sure.”
‘You can’t imagine the pain I saw'
Investigators said Friday that they believe sparkling candles atop Champagne bottles ignited the fatal fire when they came too close to the ceiling of the bar crowded with New Year's Eve revelers, two hours after midnight Thursday.
“We were bringing people out, people were collapsing. We were doing everything we could to save them, we helped as many as we could, we saw people screaming, running,” Marc-Antoine Chavanon, 14, told The Associated Press in Crans-Montana on Friday, recounting how he rushed to the bar to help the injured. “There was one of our friends: She was struggling to get out, she was all burned. You can’t imagine the pain I saw.”
Many of the injured were in their teens to mid-20s, police said. Authorities planned to look into whether sound-dampening material on the ceiling conformed with regulations and whether the candles were permitted for use in the bar.
Officials said they would also look at other safety measures on the premises, including fire extinguishers and escape routes. The region's top prosecutor warned of possible prosecutions if any criminal liability is found.
Injured hailed from across Europe
Swiss police said Friday that the injured included more than 70 Swiss nationals and over 10 each from France and Italy, along with citizens of Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal and Poland.
Emanuele Galeppini, a promising teenage Italian golfer who competed internationally, was officially listed as one of Italy’s missing nationals. His uncle, Sebastiano Galeppini, told Italian news agency ANSA that their family is awaiting the DNA checks, though the Italian Golf Federation on its website announced that he had died.
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Dazio reported from Berlin. Associated Press journalists Geir Moulson in Berlin, Graham Dunbar in Geneva, and Nicole Winfield and Giada Zampano in Rome contributed to this report.
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