CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland—Umberto Marcucci was asleep in this Swiss mountain resort town when the phone rang around 2 a.m. on New Year’s Day. A fire had engulfed a local bar popular with teenagers, and his 16-year-old son, Manfredi, was there.

Marcucci raced to the scene, a nightspot called Le Constellation, where Manfredi and some friends had gone to celebrate the start of 2026. Sirens echoed as paramedics rushed to help scores of grievously injured partygoers and firefighters battled to extinguish the flames.

The injured lay on cushions torn from nearby pubs and restaurants in an effort to keep them off the cold ground. Marcucci said many had suffered such serious burns that they were unrecognizable.

Thursday’s blaze killed at least 40 people and injured some 119 others. It set off desperate searches to find loved-ones who had been inside, as rescuers rushed survivors to burn units across Switzerland and in neighboring countries for treatment. Many of the victims were young; the legal drinking age in Switzerland is 16 years old for beer and wine and 18 for spirits.

Officials said Friday that the fire was likely caused by incandescent candles and sparklers attached to Champagne bottles that ignited a ceiling. The fire spread so quickly that many people were unable to make it to the emergency exit, leading to a bottleneck at the main exit, they said.

On Friday morning, some 36 hours later, friends and family were still calling hospitals for information and taking to social media to track down the missing. They posted appeals for information along with portraits of the people, mostly teenage, they hoped would be found alive.

The posts themselves exist in a liminal space between life and death. Many subjects smiled out from images of happier times. Others posed with adolescent detachment, or even defiance, with one boy brandishing two middle fingers.

One showed a couple smiling at each other. Others showed siblings gazing warmly. There were sunglasses, silly expressions and pursed selfie faces in the mirror. Several were images from other parties.

“He had a white knitted sweater,” one post read.

Another person posted about a missing person’s tattoos: “She has a flesh-colored crown on the right shoulder, a champagne glass on the left shoulder as well as 2 stars.”

Reached by phone or text message, family members of some missing teens said they weren’t prepared to talk, in part because they were still searching.

On Friday, police pulled back a cordon around the bar, allowing passersby to see it up close. Wooden balconies above the bar were bleached white from the heat, and several trees outside were scorched of all their leaves.

The night before, hundreds of people had gathered by the cordon for a vigil. Well-wishers placed bouquets of flowers and teddy bears. Groups of young people wept and hugged each other.

Of the 119 people injured, 113 have now been identified, Swiss officials said. Officials cautioned that the tallies may change as their investigation continues.

More than 30 specialists drawn from several Swiss cantons are involved in the process of identifying victims, Swiss officials said Friday at a press conference.

“The priority today is clearly identification, so that families can begin their mourning,” said Beatrice Pilloud, attorney general for Valais, the Swiss canton where the fire occurred.

Among those presumed dead is Emanuele Galeppini, 17, a talented Italian golf player, who lived in Dubai. He was with his family in Crans-Montana on vacation.

“No one can confirm which hospital he is in or if he has even arrived at a hospital,” his father said on Italian TV on Thursday. But on Friday, the Italian golf federation put out a statement mourning Galeppini, saying “you will remain in our hearts forever.”

On New Year’s Eve, the crowd at Le Constellation appeared to be on the young side, as it often was, people present that night said.

Anthony Cina, a 17-year-old high-school student from near Montreux, Switzerland, was waiting in line outside the bar with about 10 other people at around 1:25 a.m. Thursday morning. Inside, he could hear a DJ playing in the basement. Most people there looked to be teenagers, he said.

Before long, thick smoke started streaming out of the bar’s entrance. Seconds later, fire burst out of the bar—followed by burned teenagers who were climbing over each other to escape from the basement.

“I looked back, and I saw flames, and everything was full of fire,” Cina said.

One heavily burned person asked Cina for his phone to use its selfie mode to look at his face: “Can I see myself, am I burned, am I good, can you help me?” the person asked.

A 17-year-old friend of Cina’s, who was also waiting in the line and asked not to be named, said he had seen a person sitting in a chair inside, on fire. The friend said he was waiting for his parents to pick him up. “I want to go home,” he said Thursday while looking at the scene from outside the police cordon.

Marcucci, the father who sprang from his bed after hearing of the fire, says he found Manfredi walking outside a local cinema, dazed with pain and thirsty. Manfredi had suffered burns on 30% to 40% of his body, including his hands, back and hair, Marcucci said.

Emergency workers at the scene were too overwhelmed to treat his son Marcucci said. He drove his son and two other young burn victims to the nearest hospital, in the town of Sion.

Once there, the overloaded hospital was going to transfer Manfredi to a hospital in Germany. Marcucci worked with Italian officials to get Manfredi sent instead to a hospital in Milan.

His son on Friday had the first of what doctors said would likely be many surgeries , and is in a medically induced coma in intensive care, Marcucci said. Yet he considers Manfredi one of the lucky ones.

“We can’t be happy for Manfredi,” Marcucci said. “It’s a miracle he is alive. Death struck randomly, taking one and sparing another.”