Jan 01,2026: A blaze killed about 40 people and injured more than 100 others in a bar at a ski resort as partygoers celebrated the arrival of the new year in the early hours of Thursday morning, Swiss police say.
A fire broke out at 1:30am (00:30 GMT) at Le Constellation, a bar in the centre of the luxury Alpine ski resort town of Crans-Montana in southwestern Switzerland, police said in a statement on Thursday.
The bar is a popular tourist venue in the town. At the time of the incident, more than 100 people were present, Swiss media outlet Blick reported, quoting police.
Crans-Montana is about 200km south of the Swiss capital, Bern.
“There has been an explosion of unknown origin,” Gaetan Lathion, a police spokesperson in Wallis canton in southwestern Switzerland, told the AFP news agency.
It is unclear how the fire was ignited and spread. However, later on Thursday, The Associated Press news agency reported that Swiss officials were calling the blaze an “embrasement generalise”. It explained that this is a French firefighting term which describes how a fire can release combustible gases which can then “ignite violently and cause what English-speaking firefighters would call a flashover or a backdraft”.
Earlier on Thursday, Frederic Gisler, the police commander in the Valais canton in southwestern Switzerland, told reporters that about 40 people had been killed and 115 injured.
A medical source told broadcaster RTS that hospitals in French-speaking Switzerland had been overwhelmed with burn victims. Most of those injured were in serious condition, regional councillor Mathias Renard said. Police said that some victims were from other countries.
After being alerted to the blaze, 10 helicopters, 40 ambulances and 150 responders were sent to the scene. Police said most of the injured have “significant” injuries with severe burns. Many have been taken to the Valais hospital.
The area around the bar was completely closed off to the public, and a no-fly zone over Crans-Montana was imposed.
So far, there is no information about what may have caused the fire. Specialist forensic investigators from Zurich arrived at the scene later on Thursday.
