A service door that might have offered a second escape route at the Swiss bar where a deadly fire claimed 40 lives on New Year’s Eve was locked at the time of the incident, one of the managers told Swiss prosecutors, according to national broadcaster RTS.
The man, who co-owned the bar in the ski resort of Crans-Montana with his wife, told authorities he went to unblock one of the bar’s ground floor doors from the outside and found bodies behind it, RTS reported without saying how it obtained the information.
The man also bought sound-proofing foam from a hardware store and attached it himself to the bar’s ceilings, according to the RTS report. The fire appears to have originated with sparklers held aloft in champagne bottles setting the highly flammable foam ablaze, prosecutors have said.
Read more: Fire Safety Inspections Lapsed for Years at Swiss Bar Where 40 Died in New Year’s Blaze
Lawyers for the couple didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment. The prosecutor’s office in the canton of Valais, where the deadly incident occurred, acknowledged Bloomberg’s request for comment on the report but declined to immediately respond.
Officials are investigating the couple over alleged fire safety failures, and have said that possible charges could include homicide and bodily injury by negligence. The man was arrested following questioning on Friday, after being deemed a flight risk, prosecutors said.
A court on Monday ordered that the manager be detained for three months, but said it would be open to lifting pretrial detention in favor of alternative measures proposed by prosecutors, including a bail payment.
“Pretrial detention is a procedural measure intended solely to ensure the proper conduct of the investigation,” the court said. “It is therefore not a means of punishing the defendant, who is presumed innocent until a conviction becomes final.”
The wider investigation has also revealed failures on the part of local authorities. The mayor of Crans Montana acknowledged that the bar hadn’t been inspected for fire safety compliance since 2019. Under local law, the municipality was responsible for conducting fire safety checks on a regular basis.
Many of those who died were teenagers, with the youngest just 14 years old. Some of the more than 100 people injured are still being treated in hospitals across Europe.
Photograph: Messages and flowers at a memorial in front of the Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, on Jan. 9, 2025; photo credit: Maxime Schmid/AFP/Getty Images
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