{ FIRE AT SWITZERLAND SKI RESORT BAR } REVELLERS DESCRIBE HORROR AND PANIC How a New Year's party in the Swiss Alps became an inferno that took 40 lives

Axel Clavier felt like he was suffocating inside the Swiss Alpine bar where moments before he'd been ringing in the new year with friends and dozens of other revelers.

- Associated Press

An ambulance copter lands next to ambulance planes at the Sion airport following the fire in Sion, Switzerland on January 2.REUTERS

The 16-year-old from Paris escaped the inferno, which broke out after midnight Thursday, by forcing a window open with a table. But about 40 other partygoers died, including one of Clavier's friends.

The blaze also injured 115 people, many of them in their teens to mid-20s, as it ripped through the crowded Le Constellation bar at the ski resort of Crans-Montana, police said.

Clavier said “two or three” of his friends remained missing hours after the disaster. On Instagram, an account filled up with photos of people who remained unaccounted for, with their friends and relatives begging for tips.