CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland — Ringing in the new year with a night of drinking and dancing high in the Swiss Alps, Ebenezer Mehari, 17, decided to take a breather outside the packed Constellation Bar.
As he turned to go back inside, he told NBC News at the scene Friday, “hell” erupted as a deadly fire broke out. “I heard a big boom, and everybody was screaming,” he said.
Mehari said a thick smoke enveloped the venue and the crowd, blinding him. He fell to the ground as people rushed to escape the bar, he said, but a man pulled him away to safety.
His friends were not so lucky, he says. “I have four friends who died,” he said, still struggling to process the loss. “For me, it’s not real.”
Mehari, who has lived in the area for 15 years, said he saw someone he knew from school disfigured and burning, and others whose hair and clothes had burned off.
“Somebody was dying in front of me and I couldn’t do anything,” he said. “Her face was so burned it was red.”
The bar was popular with local teenagers, he said. The legal drinking age is 16 in Switzerland.
Mehari was among survivors taken to a hospital ward in Sion, where he was offered mental health assistance. “I tried to sleep, but I can’t,” he said.
Mehari’s was among the harrowing witness accounts emerging Friday as investigators searched for answers. At least 40 people are dead and 119 injured, officials said, many of them with serious burns that a senior doctor treating them said will require “months of rehabilitation” and even have “lifelong consequences.”
Axel Clavier, 16, from Paris, told The Associated Press that he lost his jacket, shoes and phone while fleeing, though he was grateful to have made it out. “I am still alive and it’s just stuff,” he said. “I’m still in shock.”
Samuel Rapp said he was at a restaurant next door when the fire broke out.
“A lot of people were screaming and it was horrible,” Rapp told NBC News’ British broadcasting partner Sky News. “People were walking on everybody,” he said, adding that he “saw a lot of people on the floor, and I think these people were dead because someone put jackets on their faces.”
Laetitia Place, 17, said she was caught up in the chaos.
“There’s the small door where everyone was pushing, and so we all fell, we were piled on top of each other, some people were burning, and some were dead next to us,” she told Reuters. “I was so scared — scared for myself, scared for my friends, scared for everyone inside.”
She added: “We all saw really horrible things that no one should ever have to see.”
Eric Bonvin, the general director of the regional hospital in Sion that took in several dozen injured people, said those with severe burns face months of treatment.
The injured were teenagers and young adults, roughly 20 years old on average, he told The Associated Press inside the hospital.
Injured survivors suffered burns to varying degrees, not just to their skin but also to their airways.
“There were inhalations of both smoke and also of heat that for some probably led to internal burns. That’s a really catastrophic situation, as you can imagine,” Bonvin said.
“It was hard to live through for everyone. Also probably because everyone was asking themselves, ‘Was my child, my cousin, someone from the region at this party?’ This place was very well known as somewhere to celebrate the new year,” Bonvin said. “Also, seeing young people arrive — that’s always traumatic.”
The road to recovery for the gravely injured will likely be long and arduous, he cautioned.
“For those with serious burns, intensive care treatment lasts several months,” he said.
“But it’s not without hope,” he added. “They are young, and that means they still have a lot of vitality.”
Daniele Hamamdjian reported from Crans-Montana, Switzerland. Elmira Aliieva and Alexander Smith reported from London.
