CNN reported, “One waitress was standing on another waiter’s shoulders, and the bottle and the flames were just a few centimeters away from the ceiling.” So the extra height seems to have brought the sparkler closer to the ceiling than is safe.
You would need to be a circus acrobat or gymnast to stand on someone’s shoulders while holding sparkler gadgets in your hands.
Perhaps she was not standing but sitting?
Probably, with the person on the bottom holding her legs.
Perhaps those kinds of sparklers shouldn’t be near alcohol. A known flammable liquid(if I’m using the word; flammable, correctly). Anyway a liquid that will catch fire.
Not real smart.
But the poor burn victims. So terrible.
So true. I saw a YouTube video some time ago that showed just how fast a house fire can spread. It was terrifying! That’s why it’s so important to have a smoke detector in good order on every level of your house, preferably wired and interconnected so that if one goes off, they all go off.
The fire starting:
https://x.com/LeSilencieuxO/status/2006822695749693602
https://x.com/media_express_e/status/2006701136636678290?s=20
Watching that first video, yes, the fire started on the ceiling, which is consistent with the idea that it was caused by the sparkler. But the video seems to show people standing around and not heading for the exits.
I also heard on NPR that there was a woman waving around one of those bottles, while on a man’s shoulders, and may have caught streamers on fire.
Most of the time, it’s not the fire that kills, but the smoke.
But not this time, it seems.
The first thing I thought of when I read the story was Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”, which described a casino fire in Switzerland “on the Lake Geneva shoreline”. That was caused by “Some stupid with a flare gun”.
Naw. You need to be more coordinated than i am, but when our daughter was 15, she used to stand on her father’s shoulders at pyo apple orchard, to pick apples. I’m totally certain the pair of them could have walked around a bar with her holding a sparkler. She had no formal training, it’s just something the two of them would do.
Some guy at the end of it tried swatting the fire with what looked like a cloth or something; I think people were still in “somebody can deal with this” mode", not “evacuate!” mode.
I can’t find the original , but saw this quote posted on another forum:
Two survivors of the bar fire said they saw it start when a candle connected with the wooden roof of its basement.
A woman told French TV channel BFM: "During the evening, a waiter climbed onto another waiter’s shoulders.
“He was holding a birthday candle, which was very close to the ceiling, and [the ceiling] caught fire in a couple of minutes.”
Another woman said: "The staircase leading out of the nightclub was extremely narrow. There was a huge surge in the crowd.
“We managed to escape just in time.”
Police commander Frédéric Gisler confirmed the fire “started in the basement of the bar” and there was a crush as people desperately tried to get out via the single staircase.
…Yeah, a single narrow staircase leading to a crush is exactly the sort of situation likely to result in a high death toll like this. I don’t know if it’s illegal in Switzerland but it should be. Certainly the more details come out the more this sounds like somebody was ignoring all sorts of safety rules, and a lot of people just paid the price.
I used to hang out in a club in Tokyo that had one narrow staircase to the front of the club. There was a second emergency staircase in the back, but sometimes the club would be so packed you could barely move.
Fortunately nothing happened but with popular clubs, it’s more common than you would think.
What surprises me more is the fact that the material on the ceiling of the bar was clearly not flame-retardant. I would have expected that, according to fire safety regulations for a publicly accessible bar in the basement, flame-retardant material would be a prerequisite for the approval of such a bar. Normally, strict regulations apply in Switzerland, and compliance with them is closely monitored. Apparently and unfortunately not everywhere.
Which is why it needs to be a law, since throughout the centuries businesses have shown they will take no safety precautions unless forced to.
EDIT:
Also, from another article:
Following the tragedy, the bar’s social media profiles on Instagram and Facebook have reportedly been blocked & taken offline. As of now, very little verified information about Le Constellation remains publicly accessible online.
So it’s no wonder it’s hard to find out any facts about the place.
Years ago, I used to work in the Toronto assessment office, assessing properties for tax purposes. I went out often, sometimes into some very sketchy places. *
One of the things we learned in the training, was how to get out of a building, if the need arises, such as a fire: Follow the EXIT signs. By law (in many jurisdictions), they are all push to exit. Do not trust a door that does not have an EXIT sign above it; you will have to pull, and that’s going to be hard to do if you have a crowd behind you. Push an EXIT door, and if there’s another door marked EXIT after that one, push that one too. Eventually, you will get out.
*One place I particularly remember was a broken-down office building. The creaky elevator stopped a foot shy of the floors. I could step up, and I did, only to be greeted by a hole in the floor through which I could see the floor below. I stepped around it, but the place was creaky and creepy. I did my job, but I was glad to get out of there.
ETA: To this day, when I go into a place, anyplace, I note the EXIT signs. Theatres, stores, bars, whatever; I want to know where the exits are if necessary.
I also didn’t notice any sprinklers in those videos.
And this is only 30 miles or so from Montreaux. You’d think that something famous enough both internationally and locally that there is or was a monument to it on the lakeside would mean that fire safety would be even more foremost in the minds of a presumably already well-regulated country. But of course not everything in life fits into neat little boxes.