By Dave Graham and Emma Farge
CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland, Jan 3 (Reuters) – Two people who ran a Swiss bar that burst into flames during a New Year’s Eve party, killing 40, have been placed under criminal investigation on suspicion of offences including homicide by negligence, prosecutors said on Saturday.
Two days after the fire, in which 119 people suffered injuries including severe burns, officials were still trying to identify many of those killed and attention turned to how one of Switzerland’s worst tragedies could have occurred.
The bar’s two operators are suspected of offences including homicide by negligence, causing bodily harm by negligence and arson by negligence, prosecutors in Valais, the canton that is home to the bar in the upscale ski resort of Crans-Montana, said in a statement, without naming them.
“It was an enormous tragedy. We’re all so sorry that this had to happen,” Swiss Justice Minister Beat Jans told reporters, adding that temperatures in the bar must have reached “500, 600 degrees (Celsius, 900-1,100 Fahrenheit)”.
Reuters was not immediately able to contact the bar’s owners for comment or reach the prosecutors to verify whether they were the people referred to.
Witnesses had reported seeing staff at the Le Constellation bar carrying so-called fountain candles atop bottles of champagne, and questions have also arisen about a foam material used to soundproof the ceiling of the basement where revellers danced.
Beatrice Pilloud, chief prosecutor of Valais, said indications were that the fire started because the sparklers got too near to the ceiling.
“From there, a rapid, very rapid and widespread blaze ensued,” she said on Friday afternoon.
Investigations will focus on renovations made to the bar, the fire extinguishing systems and escape routes, as well as the number of people in the building when the fire started, prosecutors said.
Police arrived quickly at the scene, according to local residents, but the fire burned victims so severely that investigators said they would need days to identify the bodies.
Illustrating the painstaking nature of that work, the Valais prosecutors’ office said in a statement on Saturday that the police had identified the bodies of four Swiss victims aged between 16 and 21 – two female and two male – and returned them to their families. It did not elaborate on their identities.
On Friday, officials had only identified one of the dead, a teenage Italian international golfer, Emanuele Galeppini.
According to two people familiar with the investigation, some of the victims may be under 16.
Local residents said the bar was popular with young people and the Swiss government said many of the dead were likely youths. Beer and wine can be drunk from age 16 in Switzerland.
One of the bar’s two owners, Jacques Moretti, told the Tribune de Geneve newspaper that Le Constellation had been checked three times in 10 years and that everything was done according to the rules.
Stephane Ganzer, head of security in Valais, said the investigation would determine if the bar had undergone its annual building inspections, but that the town had not raised concerns or reported defects to the canton.
Grieving residents continued paying their respects to the victims of the blaze, leaving flowers and tributes nearby, even after police reopened the area around the cordoned-off bar in the heart of the wealthy mountain town.
(Reporting by Dave Graham, Emma Farge, Tassilo Hummel and Benoit Van Overstraeten; Additional reporting by Francois MurphyEditing by Lisa Shumaker and Susan Fenton, Kirsten Donovan)
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