Written by Ryan Soper
Every new year since I’ve become more involved in event and venue safety operations, I find myself enthralled (potentially slightly morbidly) by news articles and reports of incidents that occur at the various events and festivities over the New Years period. Whether it’s interesting answers to Hostile Vehicle Mitigation and how these interact with crowd dynamics, wider security and safety operations or unfortunately, events that occur due to failings of safety protocols or management at large.
More often than not, these more unfortunate events tend to disproportionately occur in the south east asian or east asian regions, but this is usually indicative of under developed or indeed non-existent safety management and enforcement. The events often make great learning and examples for safety professionals and the safety community in the round. However, what you often encounter is an attitude of complacency and “that wouldn’t happen here” often because the environment is so starkly different when placed in side by side comparison.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case this year. As we saw a tragedy unfold at ‘Le Constellation’ in a very affluent and popular region of Switzerland. During the festivities of New Years Eve, a fire broke out and quickly engulfed the basement nightclub. The outcome being 40 people dead and a believed 115 further people injured. The causes and failings are particularly unique, and in fact we saw a similar incident on the same night in a venue in Bali – however due to venue design and location, there was no loss of life in this incident.
So what occurred at ‘Le Constellation’, and what can we as event or venue professionals learn from this to prevent it happening again? Through the course of this article I’ll attempt to give you a breakdown of the incident, the venue, my believed failings/causes and how I’d look to prevent an incident like this reoccurring. This will be a fairly high level, literature based review and I do not purport to have any ‘insider’ knowledge of the venue, nor have I attended this scene. What I know is drawn from publicly available information and data.
The Venue: Le Constellation, Rue Centrale, Crans-Montana
This venue is a 500 person capacity luxury bar and ‘alpine lounge’ which is situated at basement level in the heart of ‘Crans-Montana’. A upper class, affluent area boasting an array of retail and entertainment options. The area enjoys increased tourism during this period of the year owing to the area’s popularity for skiing and snow sports. In other words, the area is vibrant hot spot at new years and over the festive season. Offering excellent access to the slopes and luxury entertainment attractive to those with a few extra quid to spend.
The venue was acquired by Jessica and Jacques Moretti in 2015, and the couple quickly set about transforming what was previously a relatively non descript and unknown cafe into a locally famous and well attended night time economy venue. This is reflected in the venue’s reviews, which have been somewhat marred since the incident, but it is common for night time economy venues to suffer with hosts of poor reviews where people are (often justifiably) rejected service and take to google out of spite. This is not the case with Le Constellation however, with reviews citing excellent service, entertainment and service – with particular mention of key members of staff making customers feel welcome and valued.
Pictures of the venue’s interior point to an upper class and affluent venue, and a far cry from the shaky back street venue that you normally associate with incidents like this where it’s clear the incident is a direct result of poor management or corner cutting. I feel it is important to mention at this point that at the time of writing, the bar’s owners have come out to say that they complied with all known safety regulations and indeed they themselves have suffered personal injury following the incident and this incident certainly doesn’t read as if it is the result of shady management or corner cutting.
The Fire: 0130AM, January 1st, 2026
Shortly before 0130 hours, staff at the venue bought out a VIP drinks service. It is common at this venue that they would attach sparklers to the bottles as they are paraded out to the customers table. This is a sight seen at venues across the world, with many customers paying bottle prices for the spectacle the purchase provides and certainly not unique to Le Constellation. However, what is unique here is potentially a factor caused by the venue’s basement located squashed amongst affluent residences and venues.
The venue had installed acoustic foam of the ceilings, likely to reduce the prevalence of noise complaints which can become a key issue for venue managers as they balance the atmosphere for customers against noise nuisance and local ordinance on noise pollution. Whilst effective for noise suppression, a lot of these foams need treatment to ensure fire retardancy, or there are more specialist (and often far more expensive) options available that are inherently fire retardant.
In an effort to make the parade of the drinks more ‘spectacular’, it is reported that the table service staff came out on the shoulders of other staff members, lifting the sparkler clad bottle above their heads and bringing the pyrotechnic closer to the foam cladding. At some point during the parade, a section of the foam has ignited and rapidly engulfed, igniting neighbouring foam tiles and rapidly achieving ‘flashover’. For the uninitiated, flashover is a critical concept in examining this incident as in simple terms it’s when all or the grand majority of all the flammable items or ‘fire load’ simultaneously combusts. This is caused due to very hot fire gases (it’s never smoke in firefighting) pluming and due to the fact they cannot escape they spread horizontally, collecting and expanding in the highest areas of the room. Clearly if you are generating enough fire gas this will rapidly fill a space and when the gases reach approximately 500-600 celsius, a great deal of downward thermal energy radiates downward and items in that room reach their point of ‘auto-ignition’, which in turn generates a lot more fire gas and heat and the cycle continues.
The added danger beside the intense heat which is rarely survivable, even in the case of fully clad firefighters, but also the fact that when flashover occurs, oxygen is rapidly depleted and replaced with other gases such as carbon monoxide.
In the context of the swiss nightclub, it’s reported that the acoustic foam tiles rapidly caught light and spread across the ceiling. The foam itself appears to have accelerated flashover and it appears that either incorrect foam was installed that wasn’t fire rated, or if it treated secondarily then the treatment had degraded and was no longer effective. You often see ‘fire retardant’ sprays applied in a number of public buildings as it’s generally easier and cheaper than the fire rated equivalent building materials, however there’s a reason any fire safety inspector will raise an eyebrow at the widespread use of these sprays in any context, but especially in public venues such as bars and clubs. While there’s no suggestion this spray was indeed used in this venue, if the venue owners or fire risk assessor equivalent (the swiss model is prescriptive with the venue owners having to demonstrate certain fire control concepts are in place, rather than risk based like the UK. However they are transitioning to a more risk based model…) didn’t specify fire rated foam, then it’s sensible to assume the next best thing would have been fire treatment.
There’s so much room for error with the sprays that anything beyond short term use is generally ill advised due to diminished or indeed entirely non-existent performance.
For one, the item it is sprayed on needs to be correct, porous or shiny surfaces will affect adhesion and decrease effectiveness. I once saw this spay applied to real naval rigging ropes used to decorate pillars within a venue. The slight issue there was that the ropes had previously been soaked in creosote or similar… the application of the fire retardancy spray was always going to be ineffective in this case. The problem with porous surfaces or sponge like items, such as the acoustic foam seen in the this night club venue, is that fire retardant sprays can be drawn deeper into the material, leaving the outer of the item exposed and still able to ignite and become engulfed as if it was untreated.
Furthermore, repeated heat dust and moisture exposure can cause the treatment to degrade. A nightclub environment unfortunately features all of these, likely exacerbated in the context of Le Constellation where they served food and a wide range of drinks including coffee. In researching this article, I found review photos where you could see the foam had been in place since at least 2016. If this was treated on application, or indeed was sold ‘pre-treated’. There’s every chance the protection has degraded by now which would explain why the foam engulfed so readily when offered a source of ignition.
The final issue with fire treatment products that are sprayed on lies with the competence of the applicator. If they are not meticulous, they can have spots where the product is not properly applied, or in the case of more unscrupulous applicators – the product is watered down to make it go further but in turn reducing its effectiveness.
Venue Safety
With the aspects of the inherent ‘fire prevention’ of the venue explored somewhat, what we also need to look at is the venue’s physical design, how it was operated on the night and where there were failings in achieving total overall venue safety.
The first point of a poorly managed risk, in my opinion, lies in the most obvious. The act of one of the bottle servers getting on their colleagues shoulders with a live pyrotechnic. While I cannot 100% say, all the pictures and videos I have seen of this venue suggest that the ceilings are relatively low throughout and as such, a person on another’s shoulders would more than likely be able to touch the foam clad ceilings. You would expect that in the introduction of using the pyrotechnics, that a degree of risk assessment would be undertaken, but this thought process potentially exposes the flaw in the Swiss’s current prescriptive fire prevention/licensing model. In similar circumstances in the UK, you’d expect this act would be caught on a fire risk assessment when they assess the use and interaction that occurs in the assessed space. In one set of circumstances where a venue we looked after for safety operations introduced the use of pyrotechnics, it was correctly and quickly identified that the use of pyrotechnics would be prohibited in one of the side bars where the ceiling was lower and adorned with a fake ivy decoration. Instead they were only used sparingly in the main spaces where the ceilings were between 15-40ft high. I imagine the decision to get up on their colleagues shoulders was a split second one, born out of passion for their job in trying to achieve a visually spectacular experience for their guests that were no doubt paying a NYE premium to be there, but the act should have been expressly prohibited and managed out by the venue operators had they be in receipt of the correct information and appraised of the risks. Unfortunately, this is probably an exhibition of a problematic human factor called ‘deviance from standard’. Essentially, little deviances away from the established safety standard then compound until an inherently risky action isn’t challenged as it’s become the norm.
The second point is the delayed evacuation caused by poor procedures around starting an evacuation. Many guests reported that the music continued for an extended period of time after the roof became engulfed in flames and many guests remained and filmed the flames thinking it was part of the show. When it was then made clear that this was an emergency evacuation, this wasn’t very communicated and is likely the reason that some fatalities were found still sitting at their tables, unaware of the true dangers likely due to intoxication and poor coordination around the evacuation from venue management likely due to poorly practised procedures mixed with panic of the situation.
There is also a point around the layout and design of the venue itself. As previously mentioned, a similar incident occurred in bali, but this had no death toll because the venue was far more open air and open plan and guests were able to easily escape. Unfortunately in the case of Le Constellation, guests had limited choices on how to get out and the majority tried to leave the way they came in up the main staircase. There are now reports that during a 2015 renovation, this staircase was actually narrowed to allow for decorations, unfortunately this would impede the exit of guests. Add to this a reportedly locked additional fire exit and illuminated directional signage either non operational or obscured and this case rapidly seems like another leading cause for the tragedy was complacency and poor processes around opening and closing checks, as well as potentially poor maintenance on behalf of the venue management.
Lessons (not) learnt
Unfortunately, the incident in Crans-Montana isn’t entirely unique and in fact very similar incidents have occurred in the United States and Brazil in the last couple of decades. In all three of the incidents the circumstances are hauntingly similar. All exhibit a similar set of circumstances that lead to deaths. In all three cases, there was a pyrotechnic (albeit in the case of brazil and the USA, the pyrotechnic came from the band on stage) which ignited acoustic foam which has rapidly engulfed. They have all had poor emergency exit procedures that have lead to crushes during the evacuation, usually due to human factors where basic psychology dictates that in a panic situation you’re most likely to try and get out the way you came in. Perhaps most worryingly, all the venues had the acoustic damping foam installed, when ignited this off gasses Hydrogen Cyanide which is highly toxic to humans, effectively paralyzing the respiratory system and causing chemical asphyxiation.
The worrying parallels here have occurred in a venue that exists in one of the most developed, affluent and strictest countries in the world when it comes to safety standards and begs the question as to why the acoustic cladding was permitted for use in this venue when escape was likely somewhat restricted and we had at least two other examples of incidents where it’s presence was just contributory, it was the direct reason for deaths.
While there is improvement underway in how Switzerland manages it’s fire safety, it appears this is too little too late. Bear in mind that by UK regulations, the offending foam cladding would likely result in a prohibition notice and what materials that can be be used for the construction of spaces used for assembly or escape is heavily regulated, to prevent precisely this occurring. Furthermore, unlike the Swiss model, the UK model focuses on risk analysis and removal/mitigation from this analysis. As such, in an ideal situation, the use of pyrotechnics should get caught and mitigated, or more ideally, entirely prevented.
Conclusion: The Embodiment of the ‘Swiss Cheese’ Model
The tragedy at Le Constellation is a hauntingly literal example of the Swiss Cheese Model of accident causation. In a resilient system, multiple layers of defense—regulations, building design, fire-rated materials, and staff training—act as barriers. An accident only occurs when the “holes” in every single layer align.
In Crans-Montana, those layers failed one by one:
- The Regulatory Hole: A prescriptive system that allowed a legacy venue to operate with flammable M4-rated foam, despite the known risks.
- The Architectural Hole: A 2015 renovation that narrowed the primary exit and an emergency door that failed when it was needed most, and highlight that the way capacity calculations are achieved in the Swiss model are potentially unsafe.
- The Operational Hole: A lack of Dynamic Risk Assessment that allowed staff to hoist live pyrotechnics toward a low, combustible ceiling.
When these holes aligned at 01:30 AM on New Year’s Day, the “safety system” didn’t just bend; it collapsed.
The ‘Legal Onus’ Gap
In the UK, the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 places a clear, non-negotiable legal onus on the “Responsible Person” to proactively identify and mitigate these holes. Under British law, “complying with the permit” is not a defense; you are legally required to prove that your specific operations—like a VIP bottle service—do not compromise life safety.
In Switzerland, the current reliance on prescriptive checklists appears to have created a false sense of security. Venue owners may check the boxes for extinguishers while remaining blind to the “Normalisation of Deviance”, where risky behaviors become standard simply because “nothing went wrong last time.”
Closing the Holes: The Path Forward
Preventing the next tragedy requires more than just better foam or wider doors; it requires a fundamental shift in how we view venue operations – many places do this very well, but the key is to not become complacent:
- Live Risk Management: Safety is not a static document in a dusty folder. If the environment changes (a low ceiling) or the spectacle changes (shoulder-high pyro), the risk assessment must be live and reactive and specific to the activity at hand.
- Material Integrity: We must stop prioritising acoustics over chemistry, or spectacle over safety. Materials like the acoustic foam cladding have no place in public venues, and there needs to be urgent review of any locations making use of this or similar materials to ensure that anything used in the construction of venues or event spaces are properly fire rated and aren’t going to worsen the situation or impede escape.
- Competent Oversight: Venue managers are experts at hospitality; they should not be expected to be experts in fire gas toxicity or crowd pressures, and the blame cannot be placed solely at the feet of these managers. Hire in the experience and seek competent advice – a ChatGPT risk assessment is not suitable if you don’t understand the concept of risk assessment or indeed if you don’t actually implement the method’s outlined in the generated assessment.
My Team and I at Medirek specialise in being that extra layer of “solid” cheese (I’ll be honest, I’ve come up with better analogies in the past). We provide full event and venue safety management and work directly with venues and event organisers to oversee the safety of their ongoing operations. Our role is to be the expert eye that identifies the narrowed staircase or the non-rated foam before the sparklers are ever lit and we release the burden of managing safety operations so that the organisers and venue managers can focus on delivering top quality events, while we worry about the nuts and bolts.
In the wake of Crans-Montana, the industry must realise that luxury and affluence provide no shield against the laws of physics. Nobody is above mortality. Proper planning and professional risk management aren’t just “good practice”—they are the only thing that ensures the holes in the system never align as the toll when they do is just far too great.
If you are a venue operator/owner or an event organiser and you want to see how we can help you manage the safety of your event or venue, then please get in touch! We’d love to have a chat and see how we can help!
