Swiss face painful task of identifying bar fire victims
Dave Graham and Emma Farge |
Investigators have set about the painful task of identifying the burned bodies from a blaze that engulfed a crowded bar and killed about 40 people at a New Year’s Eve party in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana.
Emanuele Galeppini, a 16-year-old Italian international golfer who lived in Dubai, was named on Friday as the first of several possible victims from Italy to be identified.
So severe were the burns suffered by the mostly young crowd of revellers in the Le Constellation bar that Swiss officials said it could take days before they name all the victims of the fire that also injured well over 100 people, many of them seriously.
Parents of missing youths issued pleas for news of their loved ones as foreign embassies scrambled to work out if their nationals were among those caught up in one of the worst tragedies to befall modern Switzerland.
“I have been searching for my son for 30 hours. The wait is unbearable,” Laetitia, the mother of missing 16-year-old Arthur, told BFM TV, saying she was desperate to know if he was alive or dead, and where.
“If he’s in the hospital, I don’t know which hospital he’s in. If he’s in the morgue, I don’t know which morgue he’s in. If my son is alive, he’s alone in the hospital, and I can’t be by his side.”
Authorities have warned that naming the victims or establishing a definitive death toll would take time because many of the bodies were badly burned.
“All this work needs to be done because the information is so terrible and sensitive that nothing can be told to the families unless we are 100 per cent sure,” said Mathias Reynard, head of government of the canton of Valais.
Experts were using dental and DNA samples to identify the victims, he said.
What caused the blaze was unclear. Swiss authorities said it appeared to be an accident rather than an attack.
Some accounts from survivors and footage broadcast on social media suggested that the ceiling of the bar’s basement might have caught fire when sparkling candles got too close.
Visitors and residents of Crans-Montana were stunned by the inferno.
Many knew victims and some said they were lucky not to have been there themselves.
Dozens of people left flowers or lit candles on a makeshift altar at the top of the road leading to the bar which police had cordoned off.
Behind the cordon, the bodies of some victims still lay in the bar, police said, as they pledged to work around the clock to identify everyone who succumbed to the blaze.
Elisa Sousa, 17, said she was meant to be there but ended up spending the evening at a family gathering instead.
“And honestly, I’ll need to thank my mother a hundred times for not letting me go,” she said at the vigil for the victims. “Because God knows where I’d be now.”
Italy and France are among the countries that have said some of their nationals are missing, and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani would visit Crans-Montana on Friday, Italy’s ambassador to Switzerland Gian Lorenzo Cornado said.
Australia has also said one of its nationals was injured. Swiss officials have said about 40 people were killed but Italy has put the death toll at 47, based on information from Swiss authorities.
All bar five of the 112 injured had been identified now, Cornado said, with six Italians still missing and 13 hospitalised.
Three Italians were repatriated on Thursday and three more would follow on Friday, he said.
Reuters
