After
Fire disaster in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana With at least 40 dead, the difficult identification of the victims began on Friday. The bodies were so badly burned that it could take days until the names of all the victims were identified, Swiss authorities said. “The first goal is to assign names to all the bodies,” said the mayor of Crans-Montana, Nicolas Féraud, on Thursday evening. The President of the Valais Government, Mathias Reynard, explained that experts were using tooth and DNA samples for this purpose.
You have to be “100 percent sure” before informing the families. 115 people were also injured in the fire, many of them seriously. Parents of missing teenagers are desperately asking for information about their family members on social media. According to media reports, many of the injured are young people. “These are young patients. On average they are between 16 and 26 years old,” the director of the Lausanne University Hospital told the news portal 24 hours.
Many injured with severe burns
Many of the injured have life-threatening burns. At the Lausanne University Hospital alone, around 13 adult and eight minor burn victims were admitted, “more than 60 percent of their body surface was burned,” as the chief physician at Morges Hospital, Wassim Raffoul, told the broadcaster RTS.
Raffoul said the injuries were very serious and would take a long time to treat. In addition, the injured could have suffered smoke inhalation, bruises and broken bones as a result of the crowd. Burning plastic could have produced very toxic fumes.
On New Year’s Eve, hundreds were in a bar when the fire occurred Around 40 people were killed, mostly by young revelers115 others were injured. The tragedy is considered
one of the worst accidents in the history of Switzerland.
France offers help
The cause of the fire is currently still unclear. However, the Swiss authorities believe it was an accident and not an attack. Media reports and footage shared on social media suggested that soundproofing material on the ceiling in the bar’s basement may have caught fire as partying people handled sparklers stuck to champagne bottles.
Geneva airport was preparing for the arrival of the families of foreign victims, the canton of Geneva reported. It is the closest to the scene of the accident, but still 180 kilometers away by land. According to Italian sources, Italians are among the dead and injured, while other countries kept a low profile. It is uncertain whether there were Germans among them. The Foreign Ministry in Berlin says it is in contact with the authorities.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Platform X that France was accepting injured people in its hospitals and was available to provide any help. Injured people have reportedly already been taken to Paris and Lyon. Sweden and North Macedonia have also offered their help.
