Devastating fire resulting in explosions in bar in Crans Montana

Daily Life, Swiss News and General Topics
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I’m simply stating that there are stricter standards (IBC and EU) out there that Switzerland could do well in following rather than making up their own.

Of course it’s not just having the standards but ensuring compliance too.
I think it’s a combination of both which led to the tragedy here.

I also pointed out the Courchevel fire which was a wooden building where no one died or was even injured (apart from firemen suffering from smoke inhalation).
Stricter standards save lives.

Additionally, building products would have to be purchased which met those standards which is a lot easier than purchasing products and working out whether they will perform to a certain standard, or asking someone in a DIY store whether they think they will.

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It’s kind of strange to compare fire in the attic of the hotel with fire in an underground bar with 200+ drunk youngsters. The hotel guests had enough time to evacuate while the top floor was burning.

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Not at all.

There were reasons why people had time to evacuate (and knew they had to evacuate).

There were reasons why the fire in the attic didn’t spread across the whole hotel and cause a gaseous explosion in minutes.

The London Grenfell tower fire which killed seventy-two was also not a basement bar but still people died.
Like the Crans-Montana fire, flammable materials were used in the construction, the fire service wasn’t warned quickly enough. The fire started in one small space…shall I go on…

I’m not really sure what point you are trying to make.

You seem to think that the Crans-Montana fire was unavoidable or one of a kind when it clearly wasn’t.

Perhaps you could explain how/what you are thinking? Because to me it’s kind of strange.

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I’m trying to make a point that you cannot draw conclusions from two isolated cases. Both in France and in Switzerland many buildings are burning down without or with minor number of victims. Someone posted a link to the statistics where Switzerland occupied one of the bottom places by the number of fire deaths in the world.

The underground bars or clubs are simply more dangerous due to the narrow exits, so the owners should have taken additional measures to avoid such an accident, but they did exactly the opposite both at the time of renovation and during the operation of the bar. But it has no relation to the fire in the hotel in Courchevel. These two cares are incomparable and have no relation to each other.

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A young Swiss national has died.

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I’m sure that’s going to give some comfort to the parents of the dead young people.

Otherwise, what isyour point? These things happen, or something else?

Can you quote me the rules which stated that the stairway should have been a certain width?

I see things differently. It should be the authorities who confirm everything is in order and not the bar owners, who (like many others) are prepared to overlook safety in the name of saving money.

I was also pointing out that, from what I have read, the rules and regulations here are not as stringent as they could be (compared with France, for example).

In your opinion.

You have no idea how many people may have died in the Courchevel fire if fire exits had been blocked, alarms had not sounded, inflammable materials had been used etc etc

I’m was not comparing anyway, I was contrasting.

I mentioned Grenfell as well. Not an underground bar either.

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Fire death trends. This most recent published data is from 1979 to 2007:

Most countries are, year on year, reducing the number of fire deaths per annum.
Look, for example, at the downward trend of the UK.
Most other countries follow suit.

Switzerland is more of a straight line.

Unwillingness to improve or a notion that everything is perfect leads to complacency which results in more deaths.

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I think that’s a skewed assessment. Switzerland’s fire deaths per million have been the lowest of all the represented nations. Given that the closer to zero a statistic becomes, the harder it is to reduce it further. That applies to most trends and stats (‘there’s always one!’).

Having said that, the line really dips (relatively) after 2005.

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One could argue that the number of deaths is only one figure and there are factors that affect that too.

116 people were injured in the fire. There were 42 deaths.

In a less developed country without the excellent health services here, the death toll from the same fire would be much greater but the fire, and multiple causes of it, could be exactly the same.

Looking at what @TinyK wrote, one would think that fire safety was great here but perhaps it isn’t so good and what is good is the health care.

I suppose what I am trying to say is there seems to be a lot of unnecessary complacency here.
After the fire, it was pointed out that some other underground night clubs in ski resorts were also death traps.

Rather than the authorities responding to these public tip offs by sending in a team of inspectors, or close them down, they just shrugged their shoulders.

As a parallel, road traffic deaths are on the increase here but going down in other countries.
Looking at the findings of various Swiss road safety advocacy groups, it would appear that the successful measures adopted by other countries have been, on the whole, dismissed by the government here as unnecessary.

Again, complacency (or we know better).

Accidents/Incidents happen but authorities should learn from them and act from what is learnt.

Hopefully, after the ‘enquiry’, the lessons learnt will be put into practice. I really hope the blame isn’t just put on the bar owners (who are undoubtedly guilty on various counts), but on the authorities who are paid to ensure safety standards are met.
The safety standards themselves probably need some scrutiny too.

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Another poor kid died after a month of agony…so horrible.

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We know, posted about that earlier.

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Finally, the local authorities are called to declare.

The chief of the municipal firefighters was invited to share what he knows in two weeks by prosecutors. Allegedly, this fire specialist was present during the fire hazard inspection of year 2018. The infamous narrow stairs and flammable foam were already present.

The story so far is that during the 2018 and 2019 inspections, inspectors only made remarks about deficient emergency exit signs, absence of fire extinguishers and no fire safety training for the bar workers.

The catastrophic outcome is the result of a combination of things that went wrong at the same time. Maybe the same fire 1 hour later after some of the people went home would have been just a scare and warning. Same if at least one of the bar workers ran for a fire extinguisher. Or fire alarm + sprinklers as we see in lots of hotels.

So, let’s see what the firefighters chief has to say about the inspection where he was allegedly present. No one’s perfect, the flammable foam may have been missed during the inspections, but clearly marked and large enough emergency exits are a must. Fire extinguishers and properly trained workers too. Any working preventive measure would have minimized the impact of the fire.

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That’s almost always the case (and why parallel incidents are important to learn from).

As I mentioned before, the Australian Childers Palace Backpackers Hostel fire (@TinyK - also not an underground bar), where 15 young people died was started by arson.
But, a combination of locked upstairs windows, a bunk bed blocking the emergency exit in a dorm where fifteen died and the fact that the fire alarms had been turned off and the smoke detectors didn’t work led to the high number of deaths.

Back to Crans-Montana - the Times reports:

Over the past month, suspicion has grown that the resort’s close-knit establishment was intent on a cover-up to protect its reputation. Those concerns have only been partially allayed by the opening of the proceedings against the two officials ( the municipality’s head of public safety and a former council fire safety inspector).

Residents readily criticised the investigation but declined to be quoted by name.

Italian and Swiss journalists said they had been threatened by associates of the Morettis while reporting on the tragedy.

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The fire protection system is redundant.That the reason for existence of the municipal officials. It’s great that they are finally called. The delay in this call only left a lot of time for municipal authorities to prepare their defense.

It is self-evident that the bar owner and constructor failed. Flammable materials, non-trained staff, not enough emergency exits, probably customer overcapacity.

But, the redundancy of the system, construction permits, fire hazard inspections, what about them? Redundancy only works when the redundant components do their job, not only expecting that others do the work.

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Bureaucrats finding out that their job has a purpose:

The Grand Hôtel du Golf & Palace in Crans-Montana has been ordered to close immediately by the municipality of Haut-Plateau. The establishment was deemed non-compliant with fire safety regulations. The cantonal fire department has approved the decision.

During an inspection conducted on August 4, 2025, by the municipality of Crans-Montana, several deficiencies in fire safety measures, in accordance with applicable laws and regulations, were reported to the hotel’s managers. “Despite several reminders, the municipality found that the required compliance measures had not been implemented,” it explained in a press release Thursday afternoon. A final deadline of December 16, 2025, was set for compliance, which was extended to January 15, 2026, but to no avail. A previous inspection, carried out in 2024, had not revealed any major violations, RTS has learned.

On the recommendation of its safety officer, the municipality of Crans-Montana has decided to issue a preliminary notice of closure for the hotel. The Cantonal Fire Office (OCF) has taken note of the proposed measure and has informed that it agrees with it, after visiting the site on Wednesday, in the presence of the municipal security officer.

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They should find out who did this inspection and then work out whether they took a cash bribe or were just incompetent.

If the latter then it would be prudent to re-visit any other premises they have “inspected”.

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It seems in this case they were actively performing fire inspections and follow-up’s, which it seems the hotel was not taking seriously.

Also seems very questionable that all these issues suddenly arose after the August 2024 inspections, that really needs to be investigated.

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Maybe the inspectors thought (like at least three people on this forum) that hotels weren’t especially dangerous and aren’t in the same league as bar/restaurant fires (even though most have bars and restaurants)?

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It would be interesting to know what issues they flagged in this hotel

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And whether they existed when the “no major problems found” inspection occurred in 2024.

I’m suspecting it’s not something like a missing fire exit sticker or a bin in front of a fire exit or a dirty kitchen fan.