Valais figures launch plan for a lasting memorial to Crans-Montana fire victims

A disaster can disappear from the headlines long before it disappears from people’s lives. That is the point behind the new Mémorial association, which wants to create a lasting memorial site for the victims of the Crans-Montana fire in Valais. Five prominent figures from the canton have joined forces for the task, apparently convinced that remembrance should not be left to chance, nor to the slow erosion of public attention.

The founding meeting took place in Lens, the neighbouring municipality of Crans-Montana. Behind the initiative stand the former Swiss ambassadors François Barras and Raymond Loretan, the former Valais cultural chief Jacques Cordonnier, architect Pierre Pralong and Bérangère Primat, director of the Opale Foundation, a cultural centre in Lens. The association was created after a suggestion from a relative of one of the victims, which gives the project a more human origin than the usual institutional machinery that often arrives late and speaks in polished abstractions.

The founders want a dignified, simple and permanent place that is open to all. They say the aim is to support efforts that preserve the memory of the tragedy, pass it on and encourage reflection. In plain terms, they want a place where the dead are not reduced to statistics and the living are not expected to move on as if nothing had happened.

The planned memorial is meant to offer families, friends of the victims, local residents and visitors a space for shared mourning. The association also intends to collect eyewitness accounts and back cultural and educational projects. It wants to work with authorities, institutions and private supporters, while keeping the dignity of the victims and their relatives at the centre of the effort. That sounds obvious, but public memory is often run with less care than a municipal car park.

The fire at the Le Constellation bar on New Year’s Eve claimed 41 lives and left 115 people injured. Those numbers are stark enough; what follows is the more difficult task of giving them a place in collective memory that does not fade into ceremonial routine. The Mémorial association now wants to see whether Valais can manage that with sobriety, speed and a little less Swiss habit of polite forgetting.

Written by Andreas Hofer andreas.hofer@alpineweekly.com