At least 40 people were killed and another 119 injured in the blaze on New Year’s Eve
At least 40 people were killed and a further 119 injured after the blaze engulfed the Le Constellation bar at the Crans-Montana resort shortly after midnight on Thursday.
Authorities on Friday said that 113 of 119 of the victims had been identified. Emanuele Galeppini (16) is the first to be named.
Mr Galeppini, who lived in Dubai, was staying at the resort with his family and had gone to the bar with two friends on New Year’s Eve, Italian media reported.
A keen golfer, the teenager had previously posted pictures of himself with Northern Ireland golfing star Rory McIlroy to his Instagram account.
Smiling alongside McIlroy, as well as fellow pro golfer Luke Donald and former Manchester United footballer Dwight Yorke, Mr Galeppini described the shot – posted in January 2024 – as the “pic of the year”.
We need your consent to load this Social Media content. We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity.
Please review your details and accept them to load the content
In a statement, the Italian Golf Federation said it mourned the death of “a young athlete who embodied passion and authentic values”.
“In this time of great sorrow, our thoughts go out to his family and all those who loved him,” they said.
His page on the World Amateur Golf Ranking website described him as an Italian junior golfer who “loves to golf, compete and eat”.
Last year, he claimed the championship title at the Omega Dubai Creek Amateur Open.
Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said 13 Italian citizens were injured and six remained missing by midday Friday. Emanuele’s name was on the missing persons list.
Another of the people missing was Giovanni Tamburi, whose mother Carla Masielli issued an appeal for any news about her son and asked the media to show his photo in hopes of identifying him.
“We have called all the hospitals but they don’t give me any news. We don’t know if he’s among the dead. We don’t know if he’s among the missing,” she said.
Three of the wounded were being transported from Switzerland to a Milan hospital, the Italian civil protection agency said.
It comes as Swiss investigators said they believed sparking flares placed in Champagne bottles ignited the fatal fire when they were placed too closely to the ceiling of the bar.
Authorities planned to look into whether the material on the ceiling that was designed to muffle sound conformed with regulations. The candles, which give off a stream of upward-shooting sparks, were the same type that is commonly available for parties, officials said.
Mourners have left candles and flowers in an impromptu memorial near the Constellation bar in Crans-Montana. Hundreds of others prayed for the victims at the nearby Church of Montana-Station.
The Crans-Montana resort is best known as an international ski and golf venue.
Firefighters lay flowers near the sealed off Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, Swiss Alps, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 2, 2026, where a devastating fire left dead and injured during the New Year’s celebrations. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
France’s foreign ministry said eight French people are missing and another nine are among the injured.
Top-flight French football team FC Metz said one of its trainee players, 19-year-old Tahirys Dos Santos, was badly burned and has been transferred by plane to Germany for treatment.
Axel Clavier, a 16-year-old from Paris, escaped the inferno by forcing a window open with a table. He said it felt like he was suffocating inside the bar where moments before he had been ringing in the new year with friends and dozens of other revellers.
The teenager told the Associated Press that “two or three” of his friends remained missing hours after the disaster.
The blaze broke out around 1.30am on Thursday. Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV they were inside the bar when they saw a male bartender lifting a female bartender on his shoulders as she held a lighted candle in a bottle.
The flames spread, collapsing the wooden ceiling, they told the broadcaster.
People frantically tried to escape from the basement nightclub up a narrow flight of stairs and through a narrow door, causing a crowd surge, one of the women said.
A young man at the scene said people smashed windows to escape the fire, some gravely injured, reported BFMTV. He said he saw about 20 people scrambling to get out of the smoke and flames, likening what happened to a horror movie.
Investigators on Thursday ruled out the possibility of an attack.
Work is under way to identify the dead and inform their families, according to Valais Canton police commander Frederic Gisler.
Mr Galeppini (16), pictured with Luke Donald, Rory McIlroy and Dwight Yorke in January 2024
News Catch Up – Thursday 1 January
The Swiss officials called the blaze an “embrasement generalise”, a French firefighting term describing how a blaze can trigger the release of combustible gases that can then ignite violently and cause what English-speaking firefighters would call a flashover or a backdraft.
The injured suffered from serious burns and smoke inhalation. Some were flown to specialist hospitals across the country.
Authorities urged people to show caution in the coming days to avoid any accidents that could require the already overwhelmed medical resources.