‘It could have been me’: Australian teen’s narrow miss as Swiss nightclub burned

There are conflicting accounts of the start of the fire, but most suggest it began at 1.30am and that emergency services were at the scene quickly. But it took hours for ambulance workers to help all of those on the street outside the club, and some witnesses report hearing screams until 4.30am.

One witness described using curtains to wrap the victims to keep them warm after they emerged into the shivering cold in their burnt clothing – some of them so burnt they had no clothing left.

Lavy, who was raised in Melbourne but studies in the nearby city of Lausanne and comes to Crans-Montana for Christmas most years, knows local teenagers who are yet to be accounted for.

One is a young man who is listed as missing, another is a young girl who is in hospital awaiting treatment. He mentions two sisters who are both missing, and another young girl in hospital.

He is surprised, however, when I tell him that an Australian is among the injured and their family is receiving consular help. He is not aware of any Australians caught in the fire.

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Lavy arrived too late to help people out of the burning club, but he met one young man who dragged four or five people out of the building.

One local man, Paolo Campolo, a financial analyst, is being hailed a hero for racing to the club when his teenage daughter called him to tell him of the fire.

Campolo, 55, is now recovering from smoke inhalation. Speaking to Italian newspaper Il Messaggero from hospital, he said he heard victims begging for help in several languages.

“I pulled kids out with my bare hands,” he told the newspaper. “One after the other. They were alive but injured, many of them seriously.”

Flavio Casella, 18, arrived at the club after the fire to witness victims emerging in a cloud of smoke and gas.

“There were people on the ground screaming for help,” he tells me on the street outside the club, now cordoned off by police.

“There were people helping before the ambulance and the firefighters and the police came, but you couldn’t go too close because of the gas.

“We were shocked – we never thought something like this could happen.”

Casella, a student from Rome on a short visit to the ski resort with Italian friends, could have been in Le Constellation that night. He was on his way there when his group met Swiss friends and chose to go to a different bar. By the time they returned to Le Constellation, it was ablaze.

The Swiss authorities know that local volunteers made all the difference in helping people get out of the fire.

Mathias Reynard, the head of the Valais regional government, which includes Crans-Montana, told Swiss radio station RTS on Friday that the “heroic actions” showed the solidarity of the community.

“In the first minutes, it was citizens – and in large part young people – who saved lives with their courage,” he said.

As the hours pass, however, families are painfully aware of the lives that could not be saved.

Some parents are posting photographs of their teenage children on social media in the hope that others can tell them what happened to their family members that night.

Adding to the pain is the fact that Swiss police expect to take several days to identify some victims because the burns are so severe.

Some of the survivors have been placed into induced comas, and many have third-degree burns.

One mother, Laetitia Brodard-Sitre, has been searching hospitals for her son, Arthur. The 16-year-old sent her a message from Le Constellation to wish her a happy New Year, but she has not heard from him since.

“I don’t know how severe his burns are, I don’t know if he’s recognisable,” she told Reuters.

“All I want is to find my child. All I want is to find my son.”

Standing at the flower memorial on Friday, Lavy says he wishes he could have done more to help. He also feels that he escaped the fate that has devastated others.

“It could have been me,” he says. All because of a glass of water.