CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland — Local authorities failed to carry out yearly safety inspections between 2020 and 2025 at the bar in the Swiss Alps that suffered a deadly fire last week, Swiss officials acknowledged Tuesday, amid mounting accusations that lax oversight had set the stage for the disaster.

“We bitterly regret this,” said Nicolas Féraud, the mayor of Crans-Montana, the ski resort town where the fire killed 40 people, many of them teenagers, and injured over 100 others during New Year’s celebrations.

Local fire regulations mandate yearly inspections in buildings that are open to the public or present special risks.

Speaking at a news conference, Féraud said that as of May 2019, when the last inspection took place, security inspectors had flagged no major issues with the bar, Le Constellation, and that its owners had addressed minor ones. Inspections were also done in 2016 and 2018, he said.

The owners, a French couple named Jacques and Jessica Moretti, are under criminal investigation over suspicions that negligence played a role in the fire.

In their first public comments since the fire, the Morettis said Tuesday that they were “devastated and overcome with grief.”

“Rest assured that we will cooperate fully in this regard and that we will not attempt to shirk our responsibilities in any way,” they said in a statement sent by their lawyers.

Pictures on social media, as well as witness accounts, suggest that hazards blamed for turning the bar into a death trap were long present.

Those include a basement ceiling covered in flammable foam, the indoor use of firework sparklers and a lack of accessible emergency exits that turned a narrow staircase into a choke point.

Swiss investigators believe that sparklers used in the basement caused the fire. Witnesses and videos suggest that the fireworks were placed on bottles of alcohol, sending up sparks that ignited foam insulation covering parts of the ceiling.

Féraud said Tuesday that Crans-Montana had decided to ban the use of pyrotechnic devices indoors and to commission an external firm to “immediately” inspect public establishments.

Féraud said he could not explain the lack of inspections, a failing that he said came to light after the municipality dug into its archives last week and handed over documents to investigators.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Aurelien Breeden and Ségolène Le Stradic/Sergey Ponomarev
c. 2026 The New York Times Company