Overview
- The blaze erupted around 1:30 a.m. at Le Constellation bar-nightclub, with a rapid deflagration reported during New Year festivities.
- Police cite several dozens presumed dead and more than a hundred injured, many gravely, with the toll still provisional.
- A criminal-technical inquiry is underway that treats the event as an accidental fire, and terrorism has been excluded by the prosecutor.
- Witness accounts describe pyrotechnic candles on bottles igniting the ceiling, prompting a fast spread, panic, and desperate escapes through windows.
- Authorities mobilized 10 helicopters and 40 ambulances as Valais hospitals reached capacity, transferring patients to Zurich, Lausanne and Geneva, with two French nationals among the injured and a family help line opened.