Candle flares started fire, say Swiss investigators

Swiss investigators believe sparkling flares in Champagne bottles ignited the fatal fire at a ski resort when they came too close to a crowded bar's ceiling.

- AP REPORTER

A police officer helps a boy to light a candle near the sealed off Le Constellation bar.

(AP Photo/Baz Ratner)

Officials said on Friday that 40 people were killed and another 119 injured in the blaze at the bar in Crans-Montana while revellers were celebrating New Year's Eve.

Most injuries, many of them serious, occurred when the blaze swept through the crowded bar less than two hours after midnight on Thursday in southwestern Switzerland.

Mourners have left candles and flowers in an impromptu memorial near the Constellation bar in Crans-Montana. Hundreds of others prayed for the victims at the nearby Church of Montana-Station.

‘The Crans-Montana resort is best known as a ski and golf venue. It is less than three miles from Sierre, Switzerland, where 28 people were killed when a bus from Belgium crashed inside a tunnel in 2012.

‘The blaze broke out around 1.30am on Thursday. Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV they were inside the bar when they saw a male bartender lifting a female bartender on his shoulders as she held a lighted candle in a bottle. The flames spread, collapsing the wooden ceiling, they said.

People tried to escape from the basement nightclub up a narrow flight of stairs and through a narrow door, causing a crowd surge, one of the women said.