Swiss face painful task of identifying victims of deadly bar fire
CBC
Investigators on Friday set about the painful task of identifying the burned bodies of a blaze that engulfed a crowded bar and killed around 40 people at a New Year's Eve party in the upscale Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana.
Emanuele Galeppini, a 16-year-old Italian international golfer who lived in Dubai, was the first victim to be identified publicly on Friday.
So severe were the burns suffered by the mostly young crowd of revellers in the Le Constellation bar that Swiss officials said it could take days before they name all the victims of the fire that also injured well over 100 people, many of them seriously. A definitive death toll will also take time, they say.
"The first objective is to assign names to all the bodies," Crans-Montana's mayor, Nicolas Feraud, told a news conference on Thursday evening. This, he said, could take days.
Experts were using dental and DNA samples to identify the victims, he said.
Parents of missing youths issued pleas for news of their loved ones, as foreign embassies scrambled to work out if their nationals were among those caught up in one of the worst tragedies to befall modern Switzerland.
"I have been searching for my son for 30 hours. The wait is unbearable," Laetitia, the mother of a missing 16-year-old, Arthur, told BFM TV, saying she was desperate to know if he was alive or dead, and where he was.
"If he's in the hospital, I don't know which hospital he's in. If he's in the morgue, I don't know which morgue he's in. If my son is alive, he's alone in the hospital and I can't be by his side."
In a statement Thursday, Global Affairs Canada said it is not aware of any Canadian citizens impacted by the incident.
Mathias Reynard, head of government of the Swiss canton of Valais, said experts were using dental and DNA samples for the task.
"All this work needs to be done because the information is so terrible and sensitive that nothing can be told to the families unless we are 100 per cent sure," he said.
The bodies of those killed have now all been removed from the bar, a Swiss official told Reuters. Police were still on site to continue investigations into the cause of the tragedy, which Swiss authorities said they were treating as a fire, not an attack.
Italy and France are among the countries that have said some of their nationals are missing. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani will visit Crans-Montana on Friday, Italy's ambassador to Switzerland, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, said.
The Italian Golf Federation, which named the young Italian golfer as a victim, said it "mourns the passing of Emanuele Galeppini, a young athlete who carried with him passion and genuine values."
