'I don't know if he's recognizable': Families anxious for news after deadly Swiss bar fire

Laetitia Brodard-Sitre has been lingering near the site of a deadly fire that tore through a bar at a Swiss ski resort early New Year's Day hoping for information about her son Arthur Brodard.

She last heard from him just over an hour before flames erupted inside Le Constellation, a bar in Crans-Montana, claiming the lives of dozens of young people celebrating New Year's Day and injuring many more.

Brodard-Sitre, like many other family members and friends of people at the bar that night, is now enduring an agonizing wait for information about whether their loved ones are among the victims who died in the fire or were injured but whose identities have not yet been confirmed.

The last time she heard from her son was when she received a message just after the stroke of midnight that read, "Happy New Year, Mum, I love you."

"Happy New Year, buddy, I love you, have a good time," she wrote back three minutes later.

She says he later posted a disappearing video in a group chat showing him partying with friends, just moments before the first calls to the fire department were made at about 1:30 a.m.

Cellphone video captured by witnesses inside the bar shows flames spreading across the ceiling of Le Constellation. Other footage from outside shows people cramming through a narrow exit to escape and trying to climb through windows as the blaze engulfed the venue.

Arthur, who will turn 17 next month, is one of many people missing but not yet identified.

Brodard-Sitre, like loved ones of other missing people, provided her DNA in an effort to find out if her son's body is one of those in the morgue or if he's somewhere in a hospital. "We don't know how and when they will be identified,” she said.

She holds a picture of her son, with shaggy brown hair next to his Yorkshire Terrier, as she pleads for information. The photo, she says, was taken two hours before he headed to Le Constellation.

"If you have seen him, in hospitals, if you have seen him in the morgue, whether he's alive or deceased, please contact me," she said, her voice trembling with emotion in an interview with the Reuters news agency near the bar.

"I don't know how severe his burns are, I don't know if he's recognizable, I don't know. All I want is to find my child, all I want is to find my son."

She says she'll be staying close to the scene until she finds out, but it could take days before information is released.

Families, survivors and mourners alike have been anxiously awaiting updates as more details emerge about the tragedy.