Fire safety inspections hadn't been carried out since 2019 at the Swiss bar where a fire at a New Year's party left 40 people dead and over 100 injured, local authorities said Wednesday.
Investigators have said they believe sparkling candles atop Champagne bottles ignited the fire at Le Constellation in the resort town of Crans-Montana when they came too close to the ceiling. Authorities are looking into whether soundproofing material on the ceiling conformed with regulations and whether the candles were permitted for use in the bar.
Swiss authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the bar managers. The two are suspected of involuntary homicide, involuntary bodily harm and involuntarily causing a fire, according to the Valais region’s chief prosecutor.
The regulations in Valais call for annual fire safety inspections of buildings that are "accessible to the public," and regional authorities say they are the responsibility of the municipality. On Wednesday, the Crans-Montana municipality said that inspections of Le Constellation that included fire safety checks had been carried out in 2016, 2018 and 2019, and that modifications had been requested — but no issues with soundproofing measures had been raised.
The local council discovered after consulting documents after the fire that "periodic checks were not carried out between 2020 and 2025," the head of Crans-Montana’s municipal government, Nicolas Féraud, told a news conference.
"We regret this bitterly," he said, adding that it will be up to judicial authorities to determine what influence that may have had on the events that led to the fire.
Féraud said he couldn't immediately explain why safety inspections hadn't been conducted for such a long time.
Féraud said that, in September last year, an external expert had been asked to carry out a soundproofing analysis and had concluded that the bar complied with anti-noise rules, without making further remarks.
The severity of burns made it difficult to identify some victims of the fire that broke out at about 1.30am (local time) on New Year’s Day, requiring families to supply authorities with DNA samples.
Investigators finished identifying the 40 dead on Monday and said on Tuesday that they had identified all 116 people who were injured, from several countries.
On Monday, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced that it was opening a probe to assist the Swiss investigation and make it easier for families of French victims to communicate with Swiss investigators. Nine French citizens were killed, the youngest 14, and 23 were injured.
Féraud said reports from the inspections that were carried out mentioned a maximum capacity of 100 people on the bar's ground floor and 100 in its basement. It's unclear how many people were in Le Constellation when the blaze broke out and investigators have said that may never be known.
The municipality said the bar's owner obtained a permit to build a veranda in 2015 and also carried out interior work at the bar that did not require a permit.
It said it has now decided to ban the use of fireworks indoors and commission an external agency to carry out inspections of such establishments.
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