'Mom, Happy New Year, I love you'

CRANS-MONTANA:

The last message Laetitia Brodard received from her son Arthur came just minutes into 2026, as he was celebrating New Year's Eve with friends in the Swiss ski resort town Crans-Montana.

The message that pinged on her phone at 12:03 am read "Mom, Happy New Year, I love you".

"I replied to him: 'I love you, my big boy'," she said, adding that at 1:28 am, she "found a short video he had sent to his friends, showing the whole table together, celebrating".

Just minutes later, the first phone call was placed to emergency services to report a fire at Le Constellation, and soon the basement of the bar that was crammed with revellers was engulfed in flames.

"So, was it my son's table that burned?" the Swiss woman from Lausanne asked.

"It's been 40 hours. Forty hours since our children disappeared, so now we need to know," she told reporters in front of a makeshift memorial near Le Constellation.

The fire left 40 dead and 119 injured, according to an updated toll provided by authorities Friday afternoon.

Providing DNA

"If our boys are dead, ok, but don't wait three or four days to give us the news," she said.

"What if my Arthur is in a hospital, alone in an intensive care unit, because he hasn't been registered, because he is intubated and in a coma. How will they know that he is Artur Brodard?"

She has widely shared a picture of her 16-year-old son, showing a boy with a young face and brown hair swept across his forehead.

One of his friends, who was sitting with him, managed to get out, but was left with burns over 45 percent of his body, Brodard said.

"He is in the intensive care unit in Zurich," she said, choking back tears.

Swiss authorities warned it could take days to identify everyone who perished.

"We provided the DNA... We were asked to provide (descriptions of) the clothing, but as we saw in the latest videos, there are no clothes" left, she said, after clothing was burned off the victims' bodies.

"So, there's only DNA, and we know that DNA takes time," she said.

Friday morning, she said she had an appointment at "the parents' centre" — an emergency unit set up by the authorities.

But, she said, "they are very careful with the information they give to the parents, so as not to give us false hope, which is understandable".