Fire at Swiss Ski Resort Bar  01/02 06:17

   New Year's Eve fire at Swiss alpine ski resort bar kills 40, injures many 
more. Many still missing.


   CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland (AP) -- Axel Clavier felt like he was suffocating 
inside the Swiss Alpine bar where moments before he'd been ringing in the new 
year with friends and dozens of other revelers.

   The 16-year-old from Paris escaped the inferno, which broke out after 
midnight Thursday, by forcing a window open with a table. But about 40 other 
partygoers died, including one of Clavier's friends, falling victim to one of 
the worst tragedies in Switzerland's history.

   The blaze also injured about 115 people, many of them in their teens to 
mid-20s, as it ripped through the crowded Le Constellation bar at the ski 
resort of Crans-Montana, police said.

   Clavier told The Associated Press that "two or three" of his friends 
remained missing hours after the disaster.

   Late Thursday, mourners left candles and flowers in an impromptu memorial 
near the bar. Hundreds of others prayed for the victims at the nearby Church of 
Montana-Station.

   Representatives from France and Italy said their nationals are among the 
missing.

   Fire's cause remains under investigation

   Valais Canton police commander Frdric Gisler said during a news conference 
that work is underway to identify the dead and inform their families, adding 
that the community is "devastated."

   "We have numerous accounts of heroic actions, one could say, of very strong 
solidarity in the moment," Valais regional government head Mathias Reynard told 
RTS radio Friday. He lauded the work of emergency officials on the day after 
the fire but added "in the first minutes it was citizens -- and in large part 
young people -- who saved lives with their courage."

   Authorities did not immediately have an exact count of the deceased.

   Beatrice Pilloud, Valais Canton attorney general, said it was too early to 
determine the cause of the fire.

   "At no moment is there a question of any kind of attack," Pilloud said.

   She later said the number of people who were in the bar is "unknown," and 
its maximum capacity will be part of the investigation.

   "For the time being, we don't have any suspects," she added, when asked if 
anyone had been arrested over the fire. "An investigation has been opened, not 
against anyone, but to better understand the circumstances of this dramatic 
fire."

   An evening of celebration turns tragic

   Clavier, the Parisian teenager, said he didn't see the fire start, but did 
see waitresses arrive with Champagne bottles with burning sparklers.

   Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV they were inside when they saw a 
male bartender lifting a female bartender on his shoulders as she held a lit 
candle in a bottle. The flames spread, collapsing the wooden ceiling, they told 
the broadcaster.

   One of the women described a crowd surge as people frantically tried to 
escape from a basement nightclub up a narrow flight of stairs and through a 
narrow door.

   Another witness speaking to BFMTV described people smashing windows to 
escape the blaze, some gravely injured, and panicked parents rushing to the 
scene in cars to see whether their children were trapped inside. The young man 
said he saw about 20 people scrambling to get out of the smoke and flames and 
likened what he saw to a horror movie as he watched from across the street.

   Gianni Campolo, a Swiss 19-year-old who was in Crans-Montana on holiday, 
rushed to the bar to help first responders after receiving a call from a friend 
who escaped the inferno.

   "As we get closer, we see almost dismembered persons lying on the floor, in 
cardiac arrest. People were also inside trapped, laying on the ground. We saw 
their clothes melting onto their skin," Campolo told TF1. "I have seen horror 
and I don't know what else would be worse than this."

   Crans-Montana is less than 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Sierre, where 28 
people, including many children, were killed when a bus from Belgium crashed 
inside a Swiss tunnel in 2012.

   Resort town sits in the heart of the Alps

   In a region busy with tourists skiing on the slopes, the authorities have 
called on the local population to show caution in the coming days to avoid 
accidents that could further strain the area's already overwhelmed medical 
resources.

   With high-altitude ski runs rising around 3,000 meters (nearly 9,850 feet) 
in the heart of the Valais region's snowy peaks and pine forests, Crans-Montana 
is one of the top venues on the World Cup circuit. The resort will host the 
best men's and women's downhill racers, including Lindsey Vonn, for their final 
events before the Milan-Cortina Olympics in February. The town's 
Crans-sur-Sierre golf club stages the European Masters each August on a 
picturesque course.