Teen Speaks Out After Narrowly Escaping Deadly Ski Resort Fire: ‘We Were Piled Up on Top of Each Other’

A teenage survivor of the bar fire that killed about 40 people at Switzerland’s Crans-Montana ski resort is recounting the horrors she saw as she fled the blaze.

Laetitia Place, 17, told Reuters that she narrowly escaped the fire at Le Constellation bar in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

“We all saw really horrible things that no one should ever have to see,” Place said of being caught in the crowd as hundreds rushed for narrow exits.

“There’s the small door where everyone was pushing, and so we all fell, we were piled on top of each other, some people were burning, and some were dead next to us,” she recounted. “I was so scared — scared for myself, scared for my friends, scared for everyone inside.”

Another survivor, Samuel Rapp, recalled escaping the bar amid “people lying on the ground, probably dead. They had jackets over their faces.”

“Then I received videos where people were trying to get out, but they were trampling over each other, so it was hard to get out through the exit,” he added. “And there were people shouting, saying, “Help me. Please help us.’ ”

During a press conference on Thursday, Jan. 1, police commander Frédéric Gisler confirmed that “around 40 people died and at least 115 have been injured,” as a result of the blaze.

Two witnesses to the blaze told CNN affiliate BFMTV that they believed the fire could have been started by sparklers placed in champagne bottles, however, Attorney General Beatrice Pilloud said on Thursday that officials were not confirming anything at this time.

One theory authorities are investigating, Pilloud said, is something called a “flashover,” which is when hot gases rise to the ceiling and along the walls of a structure until all combustible items in the room reach their ignition point, triggering an explosion.

“Flashover is when you no longer have objects in the room on fire. The room is on fire,” Steve Kerber, the Vice President and Executive Director of the Fire Safety Research Institute, told CNN.

Police previously said that there was no suggestion that the incident was a terrorist attack and confirmed that it wasn’t an “explosive device” that had caused the fire. 

Mathias Reynard, the region’s council leader, said it will take time to identify all the victims and those injured, especially because the bar was popular with foreign tourists during the holidays, and not all of the victims are Swiss citizens.

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Switzerland’s president, Guy Parmelin, was in attendance at the press conference on Thursday, after sending his condolences in a post on X.

“What was a moment of joy turned into a tragedy in Crans-Montana last night, felt across the country and beyond,” Parmelin wrote. “The Federal Council has taken note of this with deep dismay. Its thoughts are with the victims, the injured and their families and it extends its deepest condolences.”