Mum's desperate search for son, 16, and his 9 friends after ski resort fire

Laetitia Brodard says she had not seen her son Arthur, 16, since he set off to celebrate the New Year at Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana and has been searching for him for more than 30 hours

A despairing mother was today looking for her teenage son and nine school friends who are still missing following the New Year fire disaster in Switzerland.

Laetitia Brodard said she had not seen Arthur Brodard, 16, since he set off to celebrate at Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana on Wednesday night. Some 47 people are feared dead and hundreds more wounded after sparklers inside champagne bottles ignited the venue’s basement ceiling.

On Friday, Ms Brodard, who is Swiss, told the BFT TV news channel: "I've been looking for Arthur for more than 30 hours, but there’s no news. It’s an unbearable wait. I won't stop searching, I won't give up, to know if my son is alive or if he’s gone to the other side."

Ms Brodard said Arthur and 10 school friends had booked a table in Le Constellation to mark the start of 2026, but only one has been found. She said: "He was looking forward to celebrating New Year's Eve with his school friends at the resort and in this bar.

"They had made plans and reserved a table in advance. Of the 11 people at that table only one has been found, and all the others are missing. My son is alone in a hospital if he's alive. Even if he's in a morgue, because by now you have to be able to think clearly after more than 30 hours, I don't know which morgue, I can't be by his side."

Ms Brodard continued: "Today, if he's in the hospital, I don't know which hospital. If he’s in a morgue, I don't know which morgue, which country, which canton. He could be in Bern, Zurich, Milan, Stuttgart, Lausanne. He could be anywhere. I've been in Crans-Montana for 30 hours without any news of my child. We're parents, we're doing everything we can to get answers."

Referring to the Swiss authorities, Ms Brodard said: "There are no words, they can't answer our questions because they don't know anything. The burn victims have burns covering between 45 and 60% of their bodies, mostly grade three."

Ms Brodard said she had personally filed a missing person report for her son in order to gather videos and photos from the evening to catch a glimpse of him and ‘relive the evening" minute by minute.’

She said: "At 1:28 a.m., my son made a video for a group with his friends. At 1:30 a.m., the first phone rang to report the fire."

Following criticism that such young teenagers should have been out celebrating alone, Ms Brodard said: "We're not irresponsible parents for letting our children, aged 16 and up, go out to celebrate the New Year. We're in a ski resort. Here, people of all ages celebrate the New Year. All the parents knew where their children were."

Ms Brodard said she had been trying a dedicated victims’ telephone line set up by the Swiss authorities, but had trouble getting information.

She said: "The hotline still has no more information today." Despite efforts to put out the flames, the blaze in Le Constallation engulfed the crowded basement, travelled up a set of narrow wooden stairs, and set off explosions so deafening that residents feared a terror attack.

Survivors have since described how people burned after being overcome by smoke installation. So severe were the burns suffered by the mostly young crowd - many in their teens and early 20s - that Swiss officials said it could take days before they identified and named all the victims.

The first deceased victim to be named was 17-year-old Emanuele Galeppini, an Italian teenage golfer. Guy Parmelin, the Swiss president, described the inferno as "one of the worst tragedies that our country has experienced" in that it "cut short many young lives".