Last Safety Inspection at Ill-Fated Swiss Bar Was 2019

Fire safety inspections hadn't been carried out since 2019 at the Swiss bar where a fire that broke out at a New Year's party left 40 people dead and over 100 injured, local authorities said Tuesday. Investigators have said they believe festive 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.

Regional authorities have said that safety inspections are the responsibility of the municipality, reports the AP. On Tuesday, 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, said. "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 chain of 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. He 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. 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.