The local authorities failed to carry out regular safety inspections between 2020 and 2025 at the bar in the Swiss Alps that suffered a deadly fire last week, Swiss officials acknowledged on Tuesday, amid mounting accusations that lax oversight had set the stage for the disaster.
“We bitterly regret this,” said Nicolas Féraud, the mayor of Crans-Montana, the ski resort town in southern Switzerland where the fire killed 40 people and injured over 100 others during New Year’s celebrations last week.
Speaking at a news conference, Mr. Féraud said that “the justice system will determine the extent to which this failure influenced the chain of events leading to the tragedy.”
The two owners of the bar, Le Constellation, have been placed under criminal investigation over suspicions that negligence played a role in the fire — a sudden burst of flames that engulfed the bar’s basement.
But the local authorities have also come under pressure over their role in enforcing fire safety regulations at the bar, which opened a decade ago.
Pictures on social media of extensive renovations when the bar opened in 2015, as well as witness accounts of the bar’s operations since then, suggest that many hazards that are now being blamed for turning the bar into a death trap were long present.
Those include a basement ceiling covered in flammable foam, the regular use of sparklers shooting foot-long flames and a lack of accessible emergency exits that turned a narrow staircase into a choke point.
Swiss investigators believe that the use of such sparklers in the bar’s basement caused the fire. Witnesses and videos suggest that the fireworks were placed on bottles of alcohol, sending up sparks that ignited foam insulation covering parts of the ceiling.
On Monday, the Swiss broadcaster RTS published a video that it said had been filmed by a former client of the bar during New Year’s celebrations in 2019, and that shows partygoers with such sparklers.
Someone in the video — a waiter, according to the former client interviewed by RTS — says, “Watch out for the foam!” as the fireworks are hoisted toward the ceiling.
Mr. Féraud, the mayor, said on Tuesday that “no one in the municipal administration had gotten wind of this video or of this kind of danger.”
Mr. Féraud said that before 2020, security inspectors had not flagged any major issues with the bar and that minor issues had been addressed by the establishment’s owners.
Le Constellation was an affordable option in a town popular with wealthy tourists. It did not charge an entrance fee, which made it attractive to younger people. The legal drinking age in Switzerland is 16 for beer and wine and 18 for high-proof alcohol.
Jacques and Jessica Moretti, the French couple who owns and runs the bar, have not responded to multiple requests for comment over the past week. In brief interviews with the Swiss media, they have denied any wrongdoing and said they were cooperating with investigators.
Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting from Rome.
Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.
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