Mayor Nicolas Feraud has discussed safety inspections at Le Constellation bar in the Swiss ski resort which was the scene of a horrific killer fire on New Year’s Eve
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The bar was consumed by flames, claiming 40 lives with more than 100 people injured(Image: X)
The foam sound-proofing tiles which caught light in the Swiss New Year inferno had not been safety tested for six years, it has emerged.
Local mayor of Crans-Montana, Nicolas Feraud, the Swiss village where 40 people died in a New Year’s Day ski bar inferno, has admitted the party venue had not had any safety checks for six years.
Speaking this morning Mayor Feraud said that no safety inspections had been carried out since 2019 at Le Constellation bar in the Swiss ski resort. Pictures from inside the bar show the ceiling was covered in sound-proofing panels, which are believed to have caught fire from sparklers in champagne bottles which were being held too close to them.
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Sparklers are believed to have started the fire in Le Constellation bar(Image: Tim Merry)
Authorities are looking into whether soundproofing material on the ceiling conformed with regulations and whether the candles were permitted for use in the bar.
Mr Feraud couldn’t immediately explain why safety inspections hadn’t been conducted for such a long time.
He said in September last year an external expert had been asked to carry out a soundproofing analysis and had concluded that the bar complied with anti-noise rules – but no other checks were carried out.
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The fire spread across ceiling tiles before engulfing the whole premises(Image: Tim Merry)
Mr Feraud said: “We are profoundly sorry. We did not have an indication that the checks had not been done. We regret that – we owe it to the families and we will accept the responsibility.”
He said the authority would have “acted immediately” had they been made aware of any safety concerns.
“I would have much preferred these people come and shout at my door and say this is a question of ‘not if but when’. It is very easy to come and scream now at us but how about before?’”
Mayor Nicolas Feraud revealed the lack of safety checks(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Forty people – mostly teenagers – died and another 116 suffered severe burns after the blazer tore through the bar. The dead were 2 people from Switzerland, eight from France, six from Italy and individual victims from Portugal, Belgium, Romania and Turkey.
Despite the failures and the scale of the tragedy, the mayor said he would not be resigning: “I’m not resigning, no, and I don’t want to. We’re not departing the ship right now.”
He said there was a team of just five people who do “immense work” and carry out checks in the area, looking after more than 10,000 buildings, including restaurants and hotels.
The local council is now looking at why this happened, which will include a full audit of all venues in the area and ensure more checks are carried out He also said that it is “down to the judges” to determine who is responsible.
Prosecutors have said the fire, which spread rapidly in the early hours of January 1, was likely caused by sparkling candles igniting the ceiling of the bar’s basement. All sparkler candles have now been banned inside venues, said the mayor.
Swiss authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the bar managers – married couple Jacques and Jessica Moretti. They are suspected of involuntary homicide, involuntary bodily harm and involuntarily causing a fire.
Prosecutors have indicated they will open an inquiry into “arson by negligence” and “manslaughter by negligence” if “criminal liability is established”. So far the French couple have not been formally charged.
Mr Feraud said authorities had closed another venue run by the bar’s operators.
Swiss police on Monday said they had identified all the people who were injured in the fire. They put the total at 116, with more than two-thirds still in hospital.
The injured include 68 Swiss citizens, 21 French nationals, 10 Italians, four Serbs, two Poles and one person each from Australia, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Portugal and the Republic of Congo. There were also four dual nationals: of France and Finland, France and Italy, Switzerland and Belgium, and Italy and the Philippines.
