The tragic New Year’s Eve blaze that swept through a popular bar at an Alpine ski resort has claimed its first identified victim: 17-year-old Italian golfing sensation, Emmanuele Galeppini.

The Italian Golf Federation confirmed the heartbreaking news on Instagram, paying tribute to Galeppini as a “young athlete who embodied passion and authentic values.” In their message, they expressed deep sorrow and extended their condolences to his family and all who cherished him.

Galeppini, a promising golfer from Genova, was celebrating at the ‘Le Constellation’ bar in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, when the fire erupted shortly after midnight on New Year’s Eve. The catastrophic event resulted in over 40 fatalities and left 115 individuals injured.

Amidst the chaos, Galeppini was listed among 13 missing Italians, according to a statement from Italy’s Foreign Ministry released yesterday. His father was at the scene, desperately searching for him as the family issued pleas for his whereabouts.

The teenager, from Genova, was among the 13 missing Italians on a list released by the country’s Foreign Ministry yesterday.

His father had been out at the venue looking for him following reports of the fire, as his family launched an appeal to find find him. 

Galeppini’s relatives suspected he had been out at the bar because they hadn’t heard from him since midnight, when his father reportedly spoke to him on the phone to wish him a happy birthday, according to reports. 

The Italian teenager, who was based in Dubai, was a member of the Italian national team and his best rank was 2440th, and was well known in the UAE junior and amateur golfing scene, according to GolfDigestme.com.

He was pictured with golfing legend Rory McIlroy last year and was widely regarded as a promising young talent, competing regularly across the Middle East and Europe. 

One of his most recent triumphs came at the 2025 Omega Dubai Creek Amateur Open last April. 

As tributes poured in for Galeppini, desperate families were showing mobile phone photos of their young relatives in the resort of Crans-Montana to try and discover their fate in the basement bar fire.

A French mother called Laetitia in her 40s said she had been searching all night for her 16-year-old son Arthur.

‘I’ve been looking for him for over 30 hours,’ she told BFMTV, after trawling every hospital she could find in search of news in vain.

‘I don’t know which hospital he is in. I don’t know which morgue he is in. I don’t know which country he is in. I don’t know which canton he is in,’ she added, determined to find Arthur.

She said: ‘We’re not irresponsible parents for letting our 16-year-olds go out for the New Year. All the parents knew where their children were. They were celebrating with friends.’

And distraught French grandfather Pierre Pralong appealed on TV for any information about his missing granddaughter, Émilie, 22. 

Having gone to Crans-Montana that evening with two other friends, Émilie has not been heard from since.

Her grandfather made an appeal on BFMTV on Thursday evening, January 1st, ‘for witnesses to people at the La Constellation bar who might have seen Émilie.’

‘Give us the information. Call me, call Grandpa,’ he said .

Like many families, Pralong was shaken by the speed of the fire. ‘She had a very serious life and the next day, she wasn’t there,’ he said.

‘It’s really something very hard for a grandfather, we got along very well, there was a lot of love between us,’ says Pralong.

He described the ‘agonizing’ wait the family is going through and calls the disaster a ‘dramatic’ accident. ‘The resort, but also the whole country, is shaken,’ he said.

‘We always hope, we are full of hope. It helps to overcome whatever the trials. Hope is clearly stronger than death,’

While he has ‘hope,’ particularly that his granddaughter is ‘in more or less good shape somewhere in a hospital,’ Pralong also wanted to be realistic about the possibility of another tragic event. 

‘We have to be ready to accept a more difficult situation; we mustn’t dream, we have to be realistic in the face of a tragedy like this,’ he says.

Deeply moved and touched by the outpouring of sympathy, especially during the mass he attended to pay tribute to the victims and their loved ones, Pralong once again demonstrated resilience and hope on our airwaves: ‘Some knew it was my granddaughter, they came to greet me. I was the one who comforted the people who were crying.’

Meanwhile, French football club Metz confirmed youth team player Tahirys Dos Santos, 19, is among those to have been injured in the Crans-Montana fire.

The club confirmed that the footballer is receiving treatment in Germany after being airlifted to hospital. 

‘FC Metz is deeply saddened to announce that Tahirys Dos Santos, a youth player for the club originally from Mont-Saint-Martin, was injured in the fire that occurred in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, on New Year’s Eve,’ a club statement read.

‘Severely burned, the 19-year-old was airlifted to Germany, where he is currently receiving treatment.

‘Deeply affected by this news, the club’s management, players, coaches, and staff are in shock and extend their heartfelt condolences to Tahirys during this difficult time as he battles his illness.

‘The club also wishes to offer its full support to his family and is working with medical authorities to arrange for Tahirys’ transfer to Mercy Hospital, near his home.

‘Updates on Tahirys’ condition will be provided should there be any significant changes.

‘In the meantime, FC Metz asks everyone to respect the privacy of Tahirys and his family.’

Fellow footballer Eliot Thelen, a friend of Tahirys, was also injured in the fire.

The 18-year-old, who is part of the youth team at Italian side Pescara, suffered only minor burns to his right hand.

‘Eliot was very lucky,’ his father, Carlo Thelen, Luxembourg’s director of the Chamber of Commerce, told newspaper L’essentiel.

Swiss investigators are now probing what caused the fire at the Alpine ski resort bar. 

Most injuries, many of them serious, occurred when the blaze swept through the crowded bar less that two hours after midnight on Thursday.

Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV they were inside when they saw a male bartender lifting a female bartender on his shoulders as she held a lit candle in a bottle. The flames spread, collapsing the wooden ceiling, they told the broadcaster.

People frantically tried to escape from the basement nightclub up a narrow flight of stairs and through a narrow door, causing a crowd surge, one of the women said.

A young man at the scene said people smashed windows to escape the fire, some gravely injured, reported BFMTV. 

He said he saw about 20 people scrambling to get out of the smoke and flames, likening what happened to a horror movie.

While officials said Thursday it was too early to determine the fire’s cause, investigators have already ruled out the possibility of an attack.

Work is underway to identify the dead and inform their families, according to Valais Canton police commander Frédéric Gisler.

The Swiss officials called the blaze an ’embrasement généralisé,’ a French firefighting term describing how a blaze can trigger the release of combustible gases that can then ignite violently and cause what English-speaking firefighters would call a flashover or a backdraft.

The injured suffered from serious burns and smoke inhalation. Some were flown to specialist hospitals across the country.

Authorities urged people to show caution in the coming days to avoid any accidents that could require the already overwhelmed medical resources.

Thirteen of the wounded were Italian citizens, and another six Italians are unaccounted for, Italy’s ambassador to Switzerland, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, told state-run RAI television.

One of the people missing was Giovanni Tamburi, whose mother Carla Masielli issued an appeal for any news about her son and asked the media to show his photo in hopes of identifying him.

‘We have called all the hospitals but they don’t give me any news. We don’t know if he’s among the dead. We don’t know if he’s among the missing,’ she wailed. ‘They don’t tell us anything!’

Three of the wounded were being transported from Switzerland to a Milan hospital, the Italian civil protection agency said.

France’s foreign ministry said eight French people are missing and another nine are among the injured. 

Top-flight French soccer team FC Metz said one of its trainee players, 19-year-old Tahirys Dos Santos, was badly burned and has been transferred by plane to Germany for treatment. 

Meanwhile, a newly released video showed the moment a waitress, carried on the shoulders of a colleague, held a sparkler in the air before the deadly blaze ripped through the Swiss ski bar.

Separate footage filmed moments later shows a brave reveller trying to put out flames as they spread across the wooden ceiling of Le Constellation nightclub. 

Witnesses say a sparkler in a champagne bottle caused the inferno in the bar, where around 200 partygoers had gathered to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

 BFMTV said it had been sent the photograph of the waitress by survivors, who took the picture moments before the fire began.

Despite the efforts of the young hero to put out the flames, the blaze would soon engulf the crowded basement, travel up the narrow wooden stairs and set off explosions so deafening that residents feared a terror attack.

Survivors have since described harrowing scenes inside the club as people were burned, overcome by smoke, and struggled to escape amid a desperate stampede.

So severe were the burns suffered by the mostly young crowd – many in their teens and 20s – that Swiss officials said it could take days before they name all the victims of the fire.

Families now face an agonising wait to find out whether loved ones died in the early hours of Thursday.

Guy Parmelin, the Swiss president, described the inferno as ‘one of the worst tragedies that our country has experienced’ in that it ‘cut short many young lives