SION. The investigation into the deadliest fire in modern Swiss history returned this week to the man who once ran the commune where it began. Jean-Claude Savoy, the former mayor of Chermignon, was questioned for a third time on Monday by investigators in Sion reconstructing how Le Constellation, the Crans-Montana bar where 41 people died and 115 were injured on New Year’s Day, was licensed, refurbished and inspected. He arrived in the morning and left hours later without a word for the waiting cameras.
Savoy led Chermignon from 2009 until 2016, the year before the commune merged into the new municipality of Crans-Montana. His signature sits on the 2015 operating licence granted to the bar’s owners after a refurbishment that included new sound insulation on the ceiling, the material prosecutors believe turned a sparkler accident into a flashover. The central questions of his hearings have not changed: what did the commune check, what did it demand, and what did it overlook.
He is one of 17 people now facing criminal proceedings in the case: eight elected representatives, seven municipal employees and the two owners of the bar, Jacques and Jessica Moretti. The allegations, for the municipal side, centre on manslaughter by negligence, bodily harm by negligence and arson by negligence. Jessica Moretti additionally faces a forgery charge. All the accused are presumed innocent, and several have said through lawyers that they are cooperating fully.
The owners wait their turn
The most anticipated hearings are still to come. Jacques Moretti, in pre-trial detention since the days after the fire, is due to be questioned on 2 November; Jessica Moretti follows on 2 December. Their defence maintains that the couple complied with every requirement the commune set and that the refurbishment was approved, not concealed. Prosecutors will have to show what the owners knew about the flammability of the insulation foam that lined the ceiling of the crowded bar.
The fire broke out minutes after midnight as sparklers fixed to champagne bottles were carried through the crowd, a ritual visible in the bar’s own promotional videos. Flames ran across the ceiling insulation faster than the room could empty. The 41 dead, and many of the 115 injured, were young, and the casualty lists reached well beyond Valais, to France, Italy and half the communes of the plateau.
A commune’s paper trail
For the municipal accused, the case will turn on paper: the 2015 licence, the building file, the correspondence between the bar and the commune, and the inspection reports, or their absence. Investigators have seized the communal archives, and a third questioning of the former mayor suggests the file, not the fire scene, is where the inquiry now lives. Lawyers for the victims’ families, who are civil parties to the proceedings, say each round of hearings has sharpened the same conclusion: nobody behind the counter asked the questions that would have kept the door locked.
Valais is already preparing the anniversary. A memorial service for the victims is planned for 1 January in Grône, in the Rhone plain below the resort, where the families have gathered since the fire. In Crans-Montana itself, the street where Le Constellation stood remains sealed. The criminal case will take years; the civil claims behind it will take longer.