A fire at Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, on New Year’s Eve killed at least 40 people — mostly teenagers — and injured over 100. Swiss police have opened a criminal inquiry into the bar’s managers, charging them with negligent manslaughter, arson, and bodily harm. Families are still reeling from the tragedy, while survivors recount chaotic scenes of dancing amid flames and a rear exit that was allegedly locked.
The flames of Le Constellation touched far too many young people on New Year’s Eve. Even so, the scars of that night already run much wider than the bar. In the days since the blaze, locals told CNN they were lost in the what ifs of that night: last-minute changes of plans, choosing to celebrate outside the crowded bar or with family instead of friends.
“It should’ve been us”; “I was supposed to go too”; “My siblings were there the night before,” locals told us in the days after the fire. Now, those who were texting with presumed victims just hours before the disaster are glued to their phones: locked in a desperate wait for any information about friends who simply don’t reply any more.
On Saturday, Swiss police announced they had opened an investigation into the managers of the bar for negligent manslaughter, negligent bodily harm and negligent arson. Swiss police also identified four of the victims including two young women, aged 21 and 16, and two young men, 18 and 16. In a bar popular with teenagers, there’s a growing realization in Crans-Montana that many of the dead are some of the youngest in this community of locals and holidaymakers.
For their friends — children themselves — the events of that night, beamed around social networks via horrifying videos of fiery panic, are all they talk about. “We ask what we would have done in their place,” 17-year-old Leonor Marques told CNN. “We only speak of that.” “I feel like even if we want to turn the page it’s impossible,” she said, “The subject comes around and around.”
In the dark
Friday morning, as journalists and mourners gathered before Le Constellation, one scene captured the raw emotion still coursing through this small community. A father, his face soaked with tears, crumpled to his knees as he neared the bar. After a desperate scrabble for information, through two dark nights and a difficult day, he still didn’t know if his son’s body may lie in Le Constellation, his brother told CNN. According to Swiss officials, a handful of patients in hospital from the fire have still not yet been identified.
Amid the unbearable wait for information, the days swing between hope and despair, the teenage cousin of one young man still missing since the fire said. “I mean, there’s probably no chance” he’s alive, she told CNN after nearly two full days of no news of his fate. She asked to remain anonymous out of respect for her family. For Leonor Marques, 17, who is still waiting on news of two friends she knew were at Le Constellation on Wednesday night, not knowing their fate is the most difficult. “I feel useless like I can do nothing,” she told CNN from Crans-Montana, “I don’t know if they’re alive dead, doing well or badly. I can’t do anything. I can do absolutely nothing.” Amid the tragedy, she said she had to take some comfort in knowing that two of her friends were in medically induced comas in a Lausanne hospital. “That’s something,” she said.
Surgical resident Amandine Chavanon, 25, holidaying in Crans-Montana was woken by her mother after her teenage brother called them from outside Le Constellation. Rushing to the scene to help, she spent hours triaging badly burned victims, offering life-saving aid alongside first responders and passersby. Focused on treating patients on the floor of the bank where she was inserting IV drips and calming burned survivors, identifying them wasn’t their priority. “Evacuate, evacuate, evacuate” was what we were thinking, she told CNN, even as some of the first responders tried to keep track of the names of the dozens of wounded teenagers. Stumbling out of the bar, she said many of the young revellers, “didn’t really know what’s happening.” “I had a girl. I remember she was – the whole face was burnt, and she saw me, and she said, ‘I’m going home.’ I just took her, and I said, ‘You’re not going home.’” Working a New Year’s Eve nightshift at a nearby hospital, doctor friends recounted to Chavanon having to turn away distraught parents looking for their children as they struggled to deal with the influx of patients. “It was just saving, saving, saving,” she said.
Brewing questions
As pictures emerged from the last moments in Le Constellation before the fire took hold, revellers can be seen dancing beneath a shower of sparks, flying out of champagne bottles lifted inches from the ceiling, coated in insulation foam. In video shot likely moments later, young people dance, laugh and film the flames as a young man bats in vain at the flames with a towel. With authorities directing their ongoing investigation at the role of the sparklers, testimony from survivors and those that rushed to help is beginning to fill in the picture of that fateful night.
Paolo Campolo, a local resident being hailed for pulling revellers out of the burning bar, said that he had to force a rear door of the bar to free people trapped inside. Multiple teenagers CNN spoke to following the fire, who said they had visited Le Constellation many times, said that a rear exit to the bar was usually locked. The French co-owner of the bar told Swiss newspaper Tribune de Genève Friday that the establishment had been inspected “three times in 10 years.” “Everything was done according to the rules,” Jacques Moretti he said. CNN previously reached out to both Moretti and co-owner Jessica Anne Jeanne Moretti through their businesses.
In Crans-Montana, news of the living and the dead feels like the priority for many. Processing this disaster is not yet on people’s minds. On Thursday evening, a father walked past the shrouded fences that now mark Le Constellation, his toddler perched on his shoulders. “What happened there?” she asked him, his face contorting as he searched for his reply, the weight of the tragedy too much to distil. “An accident, my dear,” he answered.
The tragedy in Crans-Montana is not an isolated incident. It echoes a global pattern of nightlife disasters where overcrowding, inadequate safety protocols, and insufficient emergency response converge to create catastrophic outcomes. Similar events have occurred in clubs and bars across Europe and North America, including the 2001 Rhode Island nightclub fire, the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, and the 2019 New Year’s Eve fire in a Tokyo nightclub — all of which exposed systemic failures in venue management and public safety oversight. The Le Constellation fire underscores the urgent need for stricter enforcement of fire codes, mandatory safety audits, and better training for staff and emergency responders.
While the bar’s managers face criminal charges, the broader question remains: who is ultimately responsible? Is it the venue owners, the local authorities who permitted the event, or the event organizers who failed to anticipate the risks? The investigation will likely uncover a web of negligence and mismanagement, but the human cost — 40 lives lost, mostly teenagers — is already a devastating reality. The families of the victims are left to navigate grief, unanswered questions, and the legal process, while the community of Crans-Montana struggles to come to terms with the loss of its youngest members.
For those still missing, the silence is deafening. The lack of identification for some victims has turned the tragedy into a mystery, with families left to wonder if their loved ones are still alive or if they are among the unaccounted for. The emotional toll is immense, with many young people in the community now questioning what they could have done differently — a haunting question that will linger long after the flames have been extinguished.
As the investigation continues, the focus must shift from blame to accountability and prevention. The Swiss government must ensure that no other community suffers the same fate. The bar’s managers, if found guilty, will face severe penalties, but the real punishment is the lives lost and the families shattered. The tragedy in Crans-Montana is a wake-up call for all venues that host large gatherings — the safety of patrons must never be compromised for the sake of profit or convenience.
For now, the people of Crans-Montana are left to mourn. The bar that once buzzed with laughter and music now stands silent, surrounded by fences and memories. The families of the victims are still waiting for answers, and the community is still trying to understand how such a disaster could have happened. The investigation may reveal the facts, but the emotional wounds will take time to heal.
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