THE NEW YORK TIMES: It was a haven for the young, where they could find hot chocolate when they wanted quiet and affordable drinks when they did not. Then it turned into a place of death.
When Bruno Martins headed through the streets of his Swiss mountain village after midnight on New Year’s Day, he expected to meet old friends celebrating in one of their favorite haunts.
Instead, Mr. Martins, 17, arrived at Le Constellation, a two-story bar popular with the village’s younger residents, to find it in flames, and surrounded by police officers. A scrum of people were trying to escape the blaze, he said. One of his friends was badly burned and sent to hospital. Others were missing, he said.
“It was total panic, people were trampling each other,” Mr. Martins said in an interview. “It’s not real,” he recalled thinking. “It’s a bar we know so well.”
The blaze, which Switzerland’s president called one of the worst disasters in Swiss history, tore through the bar, trapping many of its customers inside, killing around 40 people, and leaving the resort village of Crans-Montana in a state of shock. » | Ségolène Le Stradic | Photographs by Til Bürgy | Reporting from Crans-Montana, Switzerland | Published: Thursday, January 1, 2026. Updated: Friday, January 2, 2026
