Yes, easily forgotten once the alcohol, the music, the dancing, the excitement gets going. And only too easy to line up a list to blame after the fire is extinguished. The bereaved parents and grandparents. The brothers, sisters, cousins. The school friends. The girlfriends, boyfriends. They will feel blame because they were not there to save them. Not there to stop them going. And that blame will last for a long, long time. Unlike the criminal charges and court cases that take place, the reports in the media, the sentences passed, and the memories of those who truly deserved blame, for negligence, indifference, overcrowding, or simply not noticing. And us, the public who read and feel sorrow and regret and anger. We too will forget in time.
The woman who started the fire didn't mean to start a fire. I am certain of that. She didn't believe that her acts would cause a fire or, by extension, deaths. She didn't even conceive that the sparklers could even possibly set the ceiling ablaze. She started the fire unintentionally.
I recognise the ceiling covering: it's soundproofing, which you find also in recording studios. I think the disco was in a building that also housed other, residential properties. Maybe there had been complaints about the noise from the neighbours. So, the owner installed soundproofing to accommodate their grumbling. The soundproofing will have been installed with the noise complaints foremost in his mind, not its flammable nature. I bet if he'd been challenged on whether the ceiling could burn, he would've said, "How will a flame get up that high?"
The flame that started the fire got up that high because the woman carrying the sparklers was sitting on another person's shoulders. The aim of her sitting there was to make herself higher than all the rest. She was showing off. Showing off is when we do silly things. She didn't want to set the disco on fire, but she wanted to show off. Discos are meant for showing off. It's natural to show off in a disco.
The man filmed trying to extinguish the flames with a cloth thought he could succeed. He didn't think that not succeeding would cost 41 lives. If he'd thought that, he would have shouted for everyone to leave immediately. He knows that (if he survived, that is). The reason why he didn't shout out for everyone to leave is because he thought he'd look foolish for doing that. He thought, "If I can just get this little flame out, we can all carry on with the party." The idea that the whole disco would be engulfed in flames was so far from his mind that he never even contemplated it. For him, it was more important not to appear like a fool.
That's how safe a disco has to be. It has to be safe enough to withstand the illogicality of a woman with sparklers sitting on another person's shoulders. It has to be safe enough not to catch fire as a result. It has to be safe enough that even a small fire will not engulf the whole disco. It has to be safe enough that the party will always go on. Nowhere is that safe. But that is no excuse for not trying to make it that safe.
3,000 people died in 9/11 (just under). To the best of our knowledge, 9/11 was an intentional act by Al Qaeda. What ensued from 9/11 was a raft of measures purportedly intended to prevent 9/11 ever happening again. The aim was to thwart any such future intention. Crans-Montana was not intentional. So, how do we thwart a tragedy that arises from no one's intentional act? That is what the Swiss authorities will be grappling with in the coming months.
There is a risk here: that the measures imposed on discos become so stringent that (a) it ceases to be financially viable to even run a disco, or (b) they become such cold stone sober places that no one wants to go to them. When you look at 9/11, you would think that man's risk appetite is zero. When you look at the gambling industry, you would think that we would risk anything at all for the slimmest of chances of winning a jackpot. The young man I quote in the piece says "It could have been me." That's not the question, however. The question is "Will it be me next time?"
Yes, I can see the difference. An attack by terrorists can't be compared with an accidental fire, and I wasn't intending to do so. I was referring more to the long gap reported in the checks on the alarm system, and suggestions of overcrowding. Maybe using the word criminal was too harsh, as you point out, the fire was unintended, an accident, caused by the ceiling covering and the close nature of the flame,but my mind was fixed on the grief of the families and friends. No doubt it is easy to think of extra fire escape doors after the event, and additional alarms, but so much depends on the building itself and the speed of response by firemen and others. I agree any decision will be hard, and no doubt challenged as too severe or too ineffective from one side or the other. It will be hard to measure grief as they deliberate what should be done, or might be done.
I can see that I've opened up a panoply of questions here, without realising where it would go. So, thank you for your valued engagement, because I am not even sure where I'm going. So let us take stock.
The piece was inspired by me trying to put myself into the shoes of the party-goers that night (it all came from thinking about that phrase: "It could have been me”.) You and I read of the tragedy in our newspapers and probably thought "Those poor young people." But, if we're honest, we didn't count our lucky stars. We are not 20 years old, or living in Switzerland, or even regular nightclub visitors. But, as the author, I have myself been a young person in nightclubs in, among other places, Switzerland. So what I wanted to do is get the reader to place themselves in a different position to that of “hearing about a tragedy on the news”. I wanted to tell you what it’s really like in a nightclub, where two things above all else happen upon entering: first, the social mores of daytime living meld into a new social morality, one that bears little relationship to how we act in the day time (when our interactions basically happen on a ‘business correspondence’ level - we talk to one another without emotion or with formalised emotion; in the night time, emotions become raw). And the other is how the law itself changes. It really does. When the sun goes down, and whether we like it or not, the law changes into night-time law. I wrote about it before, here: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/light-blue-touchpaper-and-stand-well.
What struck me about the current reporting on Crans-Montana is the “anger” to which the reactions have changed (from “sadness”). A little like when it was discovered (at the latest when the second aircraft struck) that 9/11 had been no accident, but a planned attack. Controversy still rages a quarter century later as to whether it was a false flag attack, but let’s assume Al Qaeda really did it. 9/11 was someone’s intentional act. And Crans-Montana wasn’t. Still, there is a desire to find a culprit: there are now character assessments that reveal this nightclub owner to have a dubious past. If anyone can show me a nightclub owner anywhere who does not have a dubious past, I will give them a fiver. So, my previous comment is intended to show that I think this nightclub owner actually acted in good faith: he soundproofed his disco to meet the complaints of his neighbours. I know a hotel in Los Angeles that erected a canvas screen so neighbours would not see the patrons naked: it never caught fire, but I know it was flammable. Nine of the hotel’s patrons had been arrested for indecency, and the owner erected the screen in order to purchase their freedom (you can read about that here: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/la-but-confidential-a-cherished-memory). But, if it had burned one night, would people have condemned the hotel owner like they are condemning this nightclub owner? I personally think that that is a very valid question, given the underlying differences in the two cases, which should not affect our judgment, but do: grief over a gay man is very different to grief over a young, straight woman or man. Yet grief is a product of love, and we love neither the arrestees in Los Angeles nor the patrons of Le Constellation. We should be equanimous, but we’re not, are we?
In Los Angeles, the patrons were ultimately eliminated: the hotel is no longer a gay meeting point. After 9/11, far more people died in the Middle East than died in New York on the day itself, and the national security apparatus sat and watched the extra-judicial murder of the putative culprit by live feed, which the world clapped and applauded as “justice”. And in the case of Le Constellation? Why was the local authority so lax in its now oh-so-crucial fire inspections? By how much was the club over its maximum admittance limit? Was it supposed to turn people away at the door on New Year’s Eve? Did they need the money? If so, why did they need the money? What happens to nightclubs that turn people away on New Year’s Eve?
I return to the last question I asked on the previous comment: will the fire at Le Constellation make nightclub patrons baulk at crowded parties with sparklers in the future? I guess that that is something they cannot answer. And, in a way, that’s the problem: it is on one score as if we want clear-cut standards imposed on entertainment establishments in order that the patron him or herself does not need to apply any rational thinking to the decision of whether or not to go in. Except in 9/11, when all those decisions were taken for us.
The parallels are many-fold, if not always obvious: it comes down to the reason why Israel failed to prevent 7 October: they ranked a surprise incursion by the "Palestinian vermin" as being unlikely in the extreme, which is why they were sleeping when it happened. Despite the clear warnings of heightened activity by Hamas. The problem is not the inability to prevent tragedy absolutely, it is whether we are prepared to invest our thinking and resources into excluding the danger. And, with 9/11, it comes as - some say - a strange coincidence that the response means government increased its grip on citizen movement at the same time as assuring citizens of their safety in flight, and generated the excuse for a couple more wars.
I think we’ll both be following the aftermath of Le Constellation fairly closely.
Indeed we will. Things like this always have many different angles and looking at them from those angles produces answers that can never be compared or combined. So much is influenced by our own personal history and background, and your mention of gay versus straight also is true - not to this, but I have family members in all the gay and trans groups, which certainly influence my attitude towards issues in that area.
Yes, easily forgotten once the alcohol, the music, the dancing, the excitement gets going. And only too easy to line up a list to blame after the fire is extinguished. The bereaved parents and grandparents. The brothers, sisters, cousins. The school friends. The girlfriends, boyfriends. They will feel blame because they were not there to save them. Not there to stop them going. And that blame will last for a long, long time. Unlike the criminal charges and court cases that take place, the reports in the media, the sentences passed, and the memories of those who truly deserved blame, for negligence, indifference, overcrowding, or simply not noticing. And us, the public who read and feel sorrow and regret and anger. We too will forget in time.
The woman who started the fire didn't mean to start a fire. I am certain of that. She didn't believe that her acts would cause a fire or, by extension, deaths. She didn't even conceive that the sparklers could even possibly set the ceiling ablaze. She started the fire unintentionally.
I recognise the ceiling covering: it's soundproofing, which you find also in recording studios. I think the disco was in a building that also housed other, residential properties. Maybe there had been complaints about the noise from the neighbours. So, the owner installed soundproofing to accommodate their grumbling. The soundproofing will have been installed with the noise complaints foremost in his mind, not its flammable nature. I bet if he'd been challenged on whether the ceiling could burn, he would've said, "How will a flame get up that high?"
The flame that started the fire got up that high because the woman carrying the sparklers was sitting on another person's shoulders. The aim of her sitting there was to make herself higher than all the rest. She was showing off. Showing off is when we do silly things. She didn't want to set the disco on fire, but she wanted to show off. Discos are meant for showing off. It's natural to show off in a disco.
The man filmed trying to extinguish the flames with a cloth thought he could succeed. He didn't think that not succeeding would cost 41 lives. If he'd thought that, he would have shouted for everyone to leave immediately. He knows that (if he survived, that is). The reason why he didn't shout out for everyone to leave is because he thought he'd look foolish for doing that. He thought, "If I can just get this little flame out, we can all carry on with the party." The idea that the whole disco would be engulfed in flames was so far from his mind that he never even contemplated it. For him, it was more important not to appear like a fool.
That's how safe a disco has to be. It has to be safe enough to withstand the illogicality of a woman with sparklers sitting on another person's shoulders. It has to be safe enough not to catch fire as a result. It has to be safe enough that even a small fire will not engulf the whole disco. It has to be safe enough that the party will always go on. Nowhere is that safe. But that is no excuse for not trying to make it that safe.
3,000 people died in 9/11 (just under). To the best of our knowledge, 9/11 was an intentional act by Al Qaeda. What ensued from 9/11 was a raft of measures purportedly intended to prevent 9/11 ever happening again. The aim was to thwart any such future intention. Crans-Montana was not intentional. So, how do we thwart a tragedy that arises from no one's intentional act? That is what the Swiss authorities will be grappling with in the coming months.
There is a risk here: that the measures imposed on discos become so stringent that (a) it ceases to be financially viable to even run a disco, or (b) they become such cold stone sober places that no one wants to go to them. When you look at 9/11, you would think that man's risk appetite is zero. When you look at the gambling industry, you would think that we would risk anything at all for the slimmest of chances of winning a jackpot. The young man I quote in the piece says "It could have been me." That's not the question, however. The question is "Will it be me next time?"
Yes, I can see the difference. An attack by terrorists can't be compared with an accidental fire, and I wasn't intending to do so. I was referring more to the long gap reported in the checks on the alarm system, and suggestions of overcrowding. Maybe using the word criminal was too harsh, as you point out, the fire was unintended, an accident, caused by the ceiling covering and the close nature of the flame,but my mind was fixed on the grief of the families and friends. No doubt it is easy to think of extra fire escape doors after the event, and additional alarms, but so much depends on the building itself and the speed of response by firemen and others. I agree any decision will be hard, and no doubt challenged as too severe or too ineffective from one side or the other. It will be hard to measure grief as they deliberate what should be done, or might be done.
I can see that I've opened up a panoply of questions here, without realising where it would go. So, thank you for your valued engagement, because I am not even sure where I'm going. So let us take stock.
The piece was inspired by me trying to put myself into the shoes of the party-goers that night (it all came from thinking about that phrase: "It could have been me”.) You and I read of the tragedy in our newspapers and probably thought "Those poor young people." But, if we're honest, we didn't count our lucky stars. We are not 20 years old, or living in Switzerland, or even regular nightclub visitors. But, as the author, I have myself been a young person in nightclubs in, among other places, Switzerland. So what I wanted to do is get the reader to place themselves in a different position to that of “hearing about a tragedy on the news”. I wanted to tell you what it’s really like in a nightclub, where two things above all else happen upon entering: first, the social mores of daytime living meld into a new social morality, one that bears little relationship to how we act in the day time (when our interactions basically happen on a ‘business correspondence’ level - we talk to one another without emotion or with formalised emotion; in the night time, emotions become raw). And the other is how the law itself changes. It really does. When the sun goes down, and whether we like it or not, the law changes into night-time law. I wrote about it before, here: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/light-blue-touchpaper-and-stand-well.
What struck me about the current reporting on Crans-Montana is the “anger” to which the reactions have changed (from “sadness”). A little like when it was discovered (at the latest when the second aircraft struck) that 9/11 had been no accident, but a planned attack. Controversy still rages a quarter century later as to whether it was a false flag attack, but let’s assume Al Qaeda really did it. 9/11 was someone’s intentional act. And Crans-Montana wasn’t. Still, there is a desire to find a culprit: there are now character assessments that reveal this nightclub owner to have a dubious past. If anyone can show me a nightclub owner anywhere who does not have a dubious past, I will give them a fiver. So, my previous comment is intended to show that I think this nightclub owner actually acted in good faith: he soundproofed his disco to meet the complaints of his neighbours. I know a hotel in Los Angeles that erected a canvas screen so neighbours would not see the patrons naked: it never caught fire, but I know it was flammable. Nine of the hotel’s patrons had been arrested for indecency, and the owner erected the screen in order to purchase their freedom (you can read about that here: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/la-but-confidential-a-cherished-memory). But, if it had burned one night, would people have condemned the hotel owner like they are condemning this nightclub owner? I personally think that that is a very valid question, given the underlying differences in the two cases, which should not affect our judgment, but do: grief over a gay man is very different to grief over a young, straight woman or man. Yet grief is a product of love, and we love neither the arrestees in Los Angeles nor the patrons of Le Constellation. We should be equanimous, but we’re not, are we?
In Los Angeles, the patrons were ultimately eliminated: the hotel is no longer a gay meeting point. After 9/11, far more people died in the Middle East than died in New York on the day itself, and the national security apparatus sat and watched the extra-judicial murder of the putative culprit by live feed, which the world clapped and applauded as “justice”. And in the case of Le Constellation? Why was the local authority so lax in its now oh-so-crucial fire inspections? By how much was the club over its maximum admittance limit? Was it supposed to turn people away at the door on New Year’s Eve? Did they need the money? If so, why did they need the money? What happens to nightclubs that turn people away on New Year’s Eve?
I return to the last question I asked on the previous comment: will the fire at Le Constellation make nightclub patrons baulk at crowded parties with sparklers in the future? I guess that that is something they cannot answer. And, in a way, that’s the problem: it is on one score as if we want clear-cut standards imposed on entertainment establishments in order that the patron him or herself does not need to apply any rational thinking to the decision of whether or not to go in. Except in 9/11, when all those decisions were taken for us.
The parallels are many-fold, if not always obvious: it comes down to the reason why Israel failed to prevent 7 October: they ranked a surprise incursion by the "Palestinian vermin" as being unlikely in the extreme, which is why they were sleeping when it happened. Despite the clear warnings of heightened activity by Hamas. The problem is not the inability to prevent tragedy absolutely, it is whether we are prepared to invest our thinking and resources into excluding the danger. And, with 9/11, it comes as - some say - a strange coincidence that the response means government increased its grip on citizen movement at the same time as assuring citizens of their safety in flight, and generated the excuse for a couple more wars.
I think we’ll both be following the aftermath of Le Constellation fairly closely.
https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/forget-it
Indeed we will. Things like this always have many different angles and looking at them from those angles produces answers that can never be compared or combined. So much is influenced by our own personal history and background, and your mention of gay versus straight also is true - not to this, but I have family members in all the gay and trans groups, which certainly influence my attitude towards issues in that area.