As a deadly fire tore through the Le Constellation bar in the Swiss ski town of Crans-Montana, young people trapped inside tried desperately to escape.
Nathan Huguenin, 19, said he wasn’t able to sleep after escaping from the fire that tore through a packed Swiss ski resort bar during a New Year’s party, killing dozens of people, many in their teens and early 20s.
„I feel like it’s actually a nightmare, that I’m going to wake up“, Huguenin told journalists on Thursday. „I closed my eyes, and everything kept coming back to me, because I saw people being resuscitated. I saw people completely burned. I saw people dying. Honestly, it was quite complicated and quite difficult to stomach.“
The Le Constellation bar in the Swiss ski town of Crans-Montana was popular with a younger crowd. The legal age to drink wine and beer in the Valais region where it’s located is 16, so many young people had come to the bar to celebrate the new year.
The owner of a nearby store told British broadcaster Sky News that Le Constellation was known for letting young people in.
Parisian tourist Axel Clavier, 16, told The Associated Press on Thursday that he was at the bar when the fire broke out, and he felt like he was suffocating.
Describing the situation as „total chaos“, Clavier said he managed to escape by forcing a window open with a table.
