Laetitia Brodard-Sitre has been lingering near the site of a deadly fire that tore through a bar at a Swiss ski resort early New Year’s Day hoping for information about her son Arthur Brodard.
She last heard from him just over an hour before flames erupted inside Le Constellation, a bar in Crans-Montana, claiming the lives of dozens of young people celebrating New Year’s Day and injuring many more.
Brodard-Sitre, like many other family members and friends of people at the bar that night, is now enduring an agonizing wait for information about whether their loved ones are among the victims who died in the fire or were injured but whose identities have not yet been confirmed.
The last time she heard from her son was when she received a message just after the stroke of midnight that read, “Happy New Year, Mum, I love you.”
“Happy New Year, buddy, I love you, have a good time,” she wrote back three minutes later.
Laetitia Brodard-Sitre has not heard from her 16-year-old son, Arthur Brodard, since just after midnight on New Year’s Day, when she received a text message wishing her a Happy New Year a bit more than an hour before a fire ripped through a bar in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana.
She says he later posted a disappearing video in a group chat showing him partying with friends, just moments before the first calls to the fire department were made at about 1:30 a.m.
Cellphone video captured by witnesses inside the bar shows flames spreading across the ceiling of Le Constellation. Other footage from outside shows people cramming through a narrow exit to escape and trying to climb through windows as the blaze engulfed the venue.
Arthur, who will turn 17 next month, is one of many people missing but not yet identified.
Brodard-Sitre, like loved ones of other missing people, provided her DNA in an effort to find out if her son’s body is one of those in the morgue or if he’s somewhere in a hospital. “We don’t know how and when they will be identified,” she said.
She holds a picture of her son, with shaggy brown hair next to his Yorkshire Terrier, as she pleads for information. The photo, she says, was taken two hours before he headed to Le Constellation.
“If you have seen him, in hospitals, if you have seen him in the morgue, whether he’s alive or deceased, please contact me,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion in an interview with the Reuters news agency near the bar.
“I don’t know how severe his burns are, I don’t know if he’s recognizable, I don’t know. All I want is to find my child, all I want is to find my son.”
She says she’ll be staying close to the scene until she finds out, but it could take days before information is released.
Families and mourners have gathered at the Swiss Crans-Montana ski resort to pay tribute to victims, while others await news about loved ones, following a New Year’s fire at Le Constellation bar. Officials say the fire, likely started due to sparklers, killed 40 people and injured more than 100.
Miraculous escape for some, a ‘nightmare’ for others
Families, survivors and mourners alike have been anxiously awaiting updates as more details emerge about the tragedy.
Reuters spoke with two patrons who were at the bar to ring in the New Year.
One of them, who said his name is Axel, “miraculously” managed to get out.
“We couldn’t see anything,” said Axel, whose didn’t provide his last name and age.
“First of all, there wasn’t enough light, we couldn’t see at all. And secondly, there was only a 1.5 meter-wide door, for 200 or 300 people to get out,” he said. “They were falling, getting suffocated, and so on.”
At least one of his friends is among the missing. “I had my friend in my arms, she slipped.”
Axel and another friend who survived, Nathan, would not provide names of anyone they know who is unaccounted for or among the injured.
They both witnessed what Swiss prosecutors say was the likely cause of the inferno.
Nathan described seeing one woman climbing onto the shoulders of another, holding two bottles with “birthday fireworks” going off.
“She waved them too high, so they hit the ceiling and suddenly caught fire,” he said, describing a scene that quickly turned into a “nightmare” as young partygoers panicked to get away.
The deadly blaze that tore through a bar at a Swiss ski resort on New Year’s Eve, killing at least 40 and injuring dozens of others, likely started when ‘fountain candles’ attached to champagne bottles were carried too close to the ceiling, officials say.
Teens saving other teens
People who live in Crans-Montana and are familiar with Le Constellation say the bar is known to cater to a younger crowd.
The legal drinking age in Switzerland is 16 for wine and beer and 18 for hard liquor. Age restrictions on entry to bars depend on the laws in individual cantons or administrative divisions.
Gianni Campolo, a Swiss 19-year-old who was in Crans-Montana on vacation, raced to the bar to help first responders after receiving a call from a friend who escaped the fire.
He described people on the ground suffering from terrible burns.
“I have seen horror and I don’t know what else would be worse than this,” The Associated Press reported Campolo telling French television network TF1.
Marc-Antoine Chavanon, 14, joined the effort to get people out of the building.
“People were collapsing. We were doing everything we could to save them,” he said.
“There was one of our friends,” Chavanon said. “She was struggling to get out. She was all burnt. You can’t imagine the pain I saw.”
Swiss officials, including police representatives and the president, spoke Thursday after a deadly fire overnight at a bar in a resort community left around 40 reported dead, with many more severely injured.
Fearing the ‘unimaginable’
So many people suffered severe burns that some 50 patients have been transferred to burn units in hospitals elsewhere in Europe to be cared for.
The bodies of those who didn’t make it out alive have now all been removed from the bar, a Swiss official told Reuters.
But the forensic identification work will continue to take days, complicated by the fact the fire not only destroyed identifying features of the victims but also their identification documents.
Brodard-Sitre says she and other families are left to make sense of what happened.
“It’s unimaginable,” she said, “to tell ourselves that our child has burned in a fire on December 31, 2025 while spending New Year’s Eve.”
