The majority of those wounded in the devastating New Year bar blaze in Crans-Montana were still in hospital on Monday, as the bodies of five Italian teenagers were repatriated from Switzerland.
Four days on from the disaster, Swiss police announced all 116 people wounded in the deadly fire had now been identified, alongside the 40 fatalities, most of whom were teenagers.
Swiss authorities believe the fire in Le Constellation bar, in the upscale Alpine ski resort town of Crans-Montana, started in its basement level when sparklers attached to champagne bottles were lifted too close to the sound insulation foam on the ceiling as people celebrated the New Year in the early hours of Thursday.
“This tragedy could have been avoided” and “should have been avoided through prevention and common sense,” said Gian Lorenzo Cornado, Rome’s ambassador to Switzerland, who was present at Sion Airport as five coffins were flown back to Italy.
“All 116 injured people have been identified. Eighty-three of them are still hospitalised,” the Wallis cantonal police in southwest Switzerland said Monday in a statement.
Late Sunday, police also said that all of the 40 people who perished in the tragedy had been identified. They were aged 14 to 39, with the average age being 19.
Swiss nationals accounted for most of those killed and wounded, but nationals of 18 other countries were also impacted.
The dead included 19 foreign passport holders, including nine French and six Italians.
Among those injured were 23 French, 11 Italian, four Serbian and two Polish nationals, police said Monday.
Nationals from Australia, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Congo-Brazzaville, the Czech Republic, Finland, Luxembourg, the Philippines and Portugal were also among those hurt in the tragedy.
The most severely burned casualties have been airlifted to specialist burns centres in Switzerland and abroad.
The six Italians killed in the disaster included two girls aged 15 and 16, three boys aged 16, and a 16-year-old Italian-Emirati dual national.
The bodies of five of them were repatriated to Italy on Monday.
Four Swiss police officers carried each coffin into the Italian air force transport plane at Sion Airport in southwest Switzerland.
Officers saluted at the foot of the ramp as the cream-coloured coffins were taken aboard, an AFP journalist saw.
Italian ambassador Cornado said there were “numerous shortcomings in safety and prevention” at Le Constellation, outside which well-wishers have left an abundance of flowers, candles and messages of sympathy.
“We understand and share the anger, we understand and share the very emotional, very strong reactions after the tragedy,” Mathias Reynard, president of the Wallis cantonal government, told France Info radio on Monday.
“Answers must be provided to the families because even if it won’t bring their children back, we owe these families this transparency and justice.”
Twenty-six of those who died in the inferno were teenagers, including eight under 16.
That would seem to indicate a violation of Wallis cantonal laws, barring children under 16 from premises that serve alcohol after 10:00 pm, unless accompanied by their legal guardian or a third party authorised by them.
The dead included 24-year-old Caroline Rey. Her father Joel is a local councillor in Sierre, the town in the valley below Crans-Montana.
On Saturday, two police officers and a psychologist knocked on his door.
“My world fell apart... The pain felt by a parent who loses a child is unimaginable,” he told Swiss broadcaster RTS.
“I remember Caroline for her joy, her carefree spirit at the age of 24, when you have your entire life ahead of you.”
Switzerland has declared a national day of mourning on Friday, with all church bells in the country poised to toll at 2:00 pm (1300 GMT). A moment of silence is also planned.
French President Emmanuel Macron is due to visit Switzerland on Friday for a ceremony honouring the victims.
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