And folk are taking video. And again, later in that clip, when folk are trying to escape the fully ablaze building - folk are holding up their phones. Good lord! What do these people intend to do with that video? Get clicks on-line? Share it with friends?
That, and I have no doubt that many, if not most or even all of them, were highly intoxicated.
Where are all these photos and videos from? Survivors? People who uploaded their video in real time to someplace public?
I’m finding the idea of watching a video some dead person took instead of fleeing to be kinda gruesome.
Probably some of both.
I don’t know the answer in this case — but videos I take on my phone are uploaded immediately to my iCloud account. Not exactly “public,” but would exist were I to die, or my phone destroyed, and immediately viewable by the two other people with my password.
Also…I second the appreciation for @KCB615 ‘s post. I lost a close family member in a 1980 fire that led to stronger laws about sprinklers and flammable materials. I didn’t know until now just how effective sprinklers can be.
I think it’s possible to post live to YouTube. Probably also to twitter/bluesky/mastadon/etc. Hell, maybe to Twitch, too.
I have a bad feeling it’s mostly dead people’s posts. I wondered if anyone has been following that.
No matter who uploaded these posts, they are very helpful for police investigations to find out what happened exactly and in which chronological order. This might be important for insurance matters.
Yes, it does seem like the official reconstruction of the events will be pretty straightforward in this one.
And also, i think I’m going to avoid viewing those videos. I’m glad that the people who need the information can get it. But I’m not one of those people. And these videos seem too snuff-adjacent for my comfort.
How do you know who was intoxicated and even highly? Even if this would have been the case, so what? This was a New Year’s Eve Party.
I don’t think that was a value judgement so much as a comment about why the crowd may have been slow to recognize the danger and inefficient about evacuating.
This was my first thought:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volendam_New_Year’s_fire?wprov=sfla1
Twenty five years ago at about the exact moment the fire in Le Constel broke out. Same scenario, sparklers inside, only this time it was the Christmas decorations on the ceiling that caught fire. Within seconds, the ceiling was burning, and burning Christmas decorations fell on the people below. Fourteen dead, two hundred scarred for life. The youngest was thirteen. The fire only burned for a few minutes, then the oxygen ran out and it extinguished. Luckily someone bashed in a window a few seconds after that. Had he been sooner, there would have been a backdraft and more dead. Any later and more people would have choked. The fire burned up to 450 degrees Celsius. Many children burned off more than 60% of their skin. Many were hospitalized for months.
In the Netherlands rules and regulations got a lot stricter for venues when it comes to fire safety. There, also, the fire exit was blocked and there was only a narrow staircase from which to escape.
Eerily enough I had just done a deep dive on this one, because of the 25th anniversary. And then it happened again, even more deadly. Absolute horror.
Another voice thanking you for this excellent education on sprinklers and fire suppression. Once again I’m reminded of the saying “Regulations are written in blood.”
It will be interesting to see what safety standards this place was required to comply with, compared to the latest and greatest for new construction. Older buildings are often exempt from new regulations, often on the basis of cost/practicable implementation. I have not always agreed with that decision in my line of work precisely because it leaves so much “unsafe”.
A similar fire took place on New Years, 1980, in Chapais Quebec. 48 fatalities after some Christmas decorations caught fire. Emergency exits had problems opening due to uncleared snow outside. Opémiska Community Hall fire - Wikipedia
Even without fires, there have been a number of incidents in Japan where people were stamped in a panic.
The United States has had people trampled too.
The managers of a bar where a fire killed 40 people and injured another 119 have been placed under criminal investigation, Swiss prosecutors have said.
The French couple - named by the media as Jacques and Jessica Moretti - are suspected of manslaughter by negligence, bodily harm by negligence and arson by negligence, the prosecutors’ office in Valais said.
Eight Swiss nationals from among those killed were the first to be identified on Saturday.
The likely cause of the fire at Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana was sparklers on bottles being carried too close to the ceiling, a preliminary investigation found.
While I don’t have figures, quite a few of the injuries, and probably some of the fatalities as well, in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting were from being trampled.
I’ve since read that a large percentage of the casualties in this fire, fatal or not, were teenagers, the youngest being 14, and that the place was, at one point, FOUR TIMES over capacity, and the owner had a long prior criminal record. This is not good.
This. Intoxicated, and teenage. Not a good combination, along with insufficient safety features.
Temporary holiday decorations catching fire are a common cause of disaster. Regardless of the specifics of the holiday.
The idea that sparklers set a wooden ceiling on fire is laughable. That sparklers ignited plastic & paper decorations that eventually ignited the building’s fixed decor (paint, wallpaper, etc.) that eventually ignited the cladding then structure? Sure.