Guillaume, 26, was celebrating the New Year with his friends at a restaurant in the center of Crans-Montana. As the clock approached 1:30 a.m., the group of friends split up. Guillaume - who does not want his last name to be used - and a friend decided to head to the bar Le Constellation.
When they got there, they were met with horrific scenes - people throwing chairs and tables at the window panes, people trying to squeeze through the small door, bodies lying on the ground, badly burned.
"They were dead. They had no skin, no faces left," he says in a trembling voice.
Helped a man injured by fire
He and his friend saw a man who was severely burned, near death, but still alive.
"He was shaking with cold, it was freezing outside. We helped him into a building and tried to warm him until the ambulance came and took him," he says.
Guillaume, who has lived in Crans-Montana most of his life, finds it difficult to talk about what he experienced. He knows several of the people who work at the bar. He often used to go there after work in the evenings. Now he doesn't know if they have survived.
"The scenes outside the bar keep coming back to me. They are images of horror; I will never forget them. It is worse today than yesterday," he says and adds:
"Crans-Montana is my life, it's my everything. Now I don't know what will happen."
“Will never be the same”
Inside the press office on Route du Rawyl in central Crans-Montana, people talk about what has happened in low, hushed voices.
Joseph, who works behind the counter and does not want his last name used, says people are very sad.
He shows a picture of a woman who works at a restaurant down the street. But on New Year's Eve, she was working at Le Constellation.
"No one knows what happened to her," he says.
Antonio Duca, 80, believes Crans-Montana will never be the same after the disaster. He has lived in the ski resort since the 1960s and is struggling to hold back tears.
"This is indescribable. My 16-year-old granddaughter was supposed to go to the bar on New Year's Eve but it was full, so she didn't go," he says, shaking his head.
