What to Know About the Swiss Ski Resort Fire on New Year’s Day

A fast-moving fire at a bar in a popular ski resort killed 40 people and injured 119, officials said. Sparklers atop champagne bottles probably caused the fire.

Forty people were killed and 119 were injured when a fast-moving fire broke out early Thursday at a bar at a ski resort in Crans-Montana, an Alpine town in southern Switzerland, the police said.

Video footage and interviews with survivors suggested that the fire, which started during a New Year’s celebration, was caused by sparklers on champagne bottles that were held too close to the ceiling, Béatrice Pilloud, the regional prosecutor general, said at a news conference on Friday.

The disaster, during the busy holiday period in which the population in the region doubles, has overwhelmed regional medical facilities.

Of the 119 people injured, 71 were from Switzerland, 14 from France and 11 from Italy, said Frédéric Gisler, the regional police chief. Others injured in the fire were from Serbia, Bosnia, Belgium, Luxembourg, Poland and Portugal, he said.

As Switzerland entered a period of national mourning on Friday, the authorities faced the grim task of identifying the dead, which the police have said could take days or weeks because of the severity of the injuries.

Here’s what we know about the disaster:

The fire started after midnight.

The blaze broke out around 1:30 a.m. at a New Year’s party at Le Constellation, a bar in Crans-Montana, a municipality in Valais, a French-speaking canton, the police said.

Video footage taken by a witness showed people outside the burning building. It was filmed by a tourist, who said he had seen people running screaming from the bar, according to the Agence France-Presse news agency.

The Swiss authorities also released images of the bar after the fire, showing a jumble of benches and chairs, damaged cushions and a single shoe on the floor.

“What should have been a moment of joy turned into a night of mourning in Crans-Montana, affecting the whole of Switzerland and abroad,” the Swiss president, Guy Parmelin, said on social media.

The likely cause was sparklers on champagne bottles.

Ms. Pilloud, the prosecutor general for the Valais canton, said that investigators had interviewed the two French citizens who ran the bar and had drawn up a list of people who were present, which will help investigators identify the victims.

Investigators are also going to focus on the bar itself — construction materials, licenses, fire safety measures, emergency exits, capacity and more — to determine how the disaster unfolded, Ms. Pilloud said. No one has been arrested or charged in the case, but she said investigators would look into whether negligence led to the fire and whether anyone could be held criminally liable.

Ms. Pilloud said that investigators were looking into the soundproofing foam that lined the ceiling of the bar. She said it was too early to say whether the foam complied with Swiss laws and regulations. She said that the sparklers atop champagne bottles were birthday candles that can be bought in a shop and that investigators would be looking into whether they were appropriate to use in a confined space.

French news media outlets published a photograph of sparklers attached to champagne bottles, with a small fire on the ceiling, and a Swiss newspaper’s website published a video showing the fire growing in the same spot.

The Swiss authorities said that one or two explosions at the bar had probably been caused by a “flashover” — when all combustible material in a room ignites simultaneously, turning a growing fire into an inferno.

Regulars at the bar said the victims had probably struggled to escape its blazing lower floor because there was only one exit. “It’s in the basement, there’s no emergency exit, and the only way out is the stairs,” said Noa Bourdin, 18, who arrived on the scene roughly half an hour after the fire had begun.

Many of the victims were young.

The authorities have yet to publicly identify most of the victims, but they have said that international tourists, many of whom were young, were among them.

Some victims were still “fighting for their lives,” Mr. Parmelin said.

“You see panic in everyone’s eyes. There are screams, we’re burning, we see our skin decomposing,” said Noa Bersier, 20, who was at the bar.

Patients were transferred to other major Swiss cities and to neighboring countries including France, Italy and Germany

About 50 people are believed to have been badly burned, according to Dr. Robert Larribau, the head of emergency care at Geneva’s University Hospital. He said that the severity of the burns and the fact that victims were not carrying identification documents had made identification difficult.

“Significant resources are also being deployed to enable the bodies to be returned to their families as quickly as possible,” Ms. Pilloud said.

The resort is a popular international ski destination.

The ski resort of Crans-Montana is more than a century old and is known as a high-end destination popular with families and international visitors. About three million people visit each year, according to the resort’s website.

The resort is about 120 miles east of Geneva and is famed for its restaurants and luxury stores, and as the site of big sporting events, including World Cup ski races and major golf tournaments. It was scheduled to host the men’s and women’s World Cup races later this month.

In 2024, Vail Resorts, the world’s biggest ski resort operator, acquired Crans-Montana, planning to invest heavily to update its infrastructure, including snow-making facilities.

The bar where the fire broke out, Le Constellation, was a “casual” gathering place, rather than the type of luxury nightspot that the resort is known for, said Amin Momen, the founder of Momentum Experiences, a London-based travel company that organizes corporate ski events in places including Crans-Montana. The bar was big, with upstairs and downstairs areas, and foreign visitors often went there to watch sports, like Premier League soccer, he said.

Reporting was contributed by Ségolène Le Stradic, Christopher F. Schuetze, John Yoon, Isabella Kwai, Aurelien Breeden, Monika Cvorak, Nick Cumming-Bruce, Hannah Ziegler and Victor Mather.

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