FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
Paolo was among the first to react after the fire at Le Constellation. He recounts the dramatic moments: the blocked door, the bodies that "fell on top of him", the screams of the trapped young people...
He blew open a locked door from the inside, while the bar was filled with smoke and the lack of oxygen was felt.
Paolo Campolo, an Italian financial analyst with Swiss citizenship, is one of the direct witnesses to the fire that turned a New Year's Eve party into a tragedy in Crans-Montana.
In an interview with Il Messaggero, Campolo recounts from his bed in Sion hospital how he managed to save several young people trapped inside the Le Constellation bar.
Campolo, 55, has lived in Crans-Montana since 2023, about 50 meters from the bar. On the night of the fire, he was at home with friends. "It was around 1:20 in the morning when I saw red flames coming out of the windows." A little later, his daughter called: "Dad, there's a tragedy, there's a fire and there are many injured."
His daughter had not yet entered the bar.
"She wanted to come in. She had returned from Geneva and, before leaving, she had stopped by the house to say hello, raise a toast together and open the panettone. It was our fault she was late," he said.
A delay that, like her father's, saved her life. Her boyfriend, however, was inside the bar. He suffered severe burns and is in a hospital in Basel.
After the alarm, Campolo immediately went out into the street with a fire extinguisher in hand.
Everything was covered in smoke.
"The flames were spreading very quickly, it was a violent fire situation and it only lasted a few minutes. Then it stopped. But there was no oxygen left inside. And that's what caused the massacre," the 55-year-old says.
He realizes that the fire extinguisher is useless and that help has not yet arrived. He looks for an alternative way to enter.
He reaches a back door, perhaps an emergency exit. “It opened from the outside, but it was blocked or locked inside. Behind it, through the glass, I could see legs and arms. Bodies on the ground. The structure hadn’t collapsed, but inside it was a trap.”
With the help of a stranger who arrived after hearing the explosion, he tries to force his way in. “We put our foot on the other window and pulled with all our strength. We would have needed at least an axe, but we had nothing. I don’t even know how we did it, but we managed.”
When the door opened, bodies fell in front of me. “I will only tell you that some bodies fell on top of us. Young people alive, but burned. Some conscious, others not. They were calling for help in different languages, including Italian.”
The place, he explains, was a bar frequented mainly by minors. Campolo doesn't stop.
"I didn't think about the pain, the smoke, the danger... I pulled the children out by hand, one after the other."
With the other man acting as a first aider, he takes them out and leaves them at the assembly point in front of the venue. “They kept screaming. I thought only one thing: they could be my children.”
Behind the counter, there was nothing else. "There was nothing. A covered hallway, a closed or locked door. Whoever was inside had no way of escape." Alongside the improvised rescue efforts, solidarity also emerged. "The nearby bars reinvented themselves as health care centers."
What remains, he says, are the looks. "The sober despair of those who know they are dying. Burning people looking at you and asking you not to leave them there. It is something that never disappears." /Adapted from Pamphlet/
Lini një Përgjigje