Swiss investigators rush to identify victims of New Year’s fire
Swiss officials say it may take days to identify victims of the Le Constellation fire, as many young revellers suffered severe burns
Investigators on Friday set about the painful task of identifying the burned bodies from a blaze that engulfed a crowded bar and killed around 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.
Desperate search
“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.