The Australian teen who escaped the Swiss blaze

There are conflicting accounts of the fire’s start, but most suggest it started at 1.30am and emergency services quickly arrived at the scene. But it took hours for ambulance workers to help anyone on the street outside the club, with some witnesses reporting hearing screams until 4.30am.

An eyewitness said they wrapped the victims in curtains to keep them warm after they emerged into the freezing cold with their burnt clothes; Some were so burned that they had no clothes left.

Lavy, who grew up in Melbourne but studied in the nearby city of Lausanne and comes to Crans-Montana for Christmas most years, knows the local teenagers, whose names have not yet been released.

One is a young man listed as missing, the other is a young girl awaiting treatment at the hospital. It tells of two sisters, both missing, and another young girl in the hospital.

But he is surprised when I tell him that an Australian is among the injured and that their families are receiving consular assistance. He doesn’t know about any Australians caught in the fire.

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Lavy arrived too late to save people from the burning club but met a young man who dragged four or five people out of the building.

Local man Paolo Campolo, a financial analyst, is being hailed as a hero for rushing to the club after his teenage daughter called him to tell him of the fire.

Campolo, 55, is currently recovering from smoke inhalation. Speaking to the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero He said he heard from the hospital that victims were pleading for help in many languages.

“I took the children out with my bare hands,” he told the newspaper. “One after another. They were alive but injured, many seriously.”

Flavio Casella, 18, arrived at the club after the fire and saw the victims emerging in a cloud of smoke and gas.

“There were people on the ground screaming for help,” he told me on the street outside the club, which is now cordoned off by police.

“There were people helping before the ambulance, fire brigade and police arrived, but you couldn’t get too close because of the gas.

“We were shocked, we never thought something like this could happen.”

Casella, a student from Rome on a brief visit to the ski resort with Italian friends, might have been at Le Constellation that night. He was on his way there when his group met up with Swiss friends and chose to go to a different bar. When they returned to Le Constellation, it was in flames.

Swiss authorities know that local volunteers make a big difference in helping people escape fires.

Mathias Reynard, head of the Valais regional government, which includes Crans-Montana, told Swiss radio station RTS on Friday that the “heroic actions” showed the solidarity of the community.

“It was citizens, mostly young people, who saved lives with their courage in the first minutes,” he said.

But as the hours pass, families become painfully aware of the lives that could not be saved.

Some parents post photos of their teenage children on social media in the hope that others can tell them what happened to their family members that night.

Adding to the pain is the expectation that Swiss police will take several days to identify some of the victims because the burns were so severe.

Some of the survivors have been placed in an induced coma and many have third-degree burns.

A mother named Laetitia Brodard-Sitre calls hospitals for her son Arthur. The 16-year-old girl sent a message from Le Constellation to wish him a happy New Year but has not heard from him since.

“I don’t know how serious his burns are, I don’t know if they are recognisable,” he told Reuters.

“All I want is to find my child. All I want is to find my son.”

Standing at the floral memorial Friday, Lavy said he wished he could do more to help. He also feels freed from the fate that destroys others.

“It could have been me too,” he says. All because of a glass of water.