"Like a horror movie": Survivors, witnesses describe Swiss ski resort fire

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Nathan Huguenin, 19, said he wasn't able to sleep after escaping from the fire that tore through a packed Swiss ski resort bar during a New Year's party, killing dozens of people, many in their teens and early 20s.

"I feel like it's actually a nightmare, that I'm going to wake up," Huguenin told journalists on Thursday. "I closed my eyes, and everything kept coming back to me, because I saw people being resuscitated. I saw people completely burned. I saw people dying. Honestly, it was quite complicated and quite difficult to stomach."

The Le Constellation bar in the Swiss ski town of Crans-Montana was popular with a younger crowd. The legal age to drink wine and beer in the Valais region where it's located is 16, so many young people had come to the bar to celebrate the new year.

The owner of a nearby store told British broadcaster Sky News that Le Constellation was known for letting young people in.

Parisian tourist Axel Clavier, 16, told The Associated Press on Thursday that he was at the bar when the fire broke out, and he felt like he was suffocating.

Describing the situation as "total chaos," Clavier said he managed to escape by forcing a window open with a table. He said one of his friends was killed, two or three remain missing, and he was "still in shock."

Fire In Bar At Swiss Ski Resort Of Crans-Montana Kills Dozens

A witness named Alexis, 18, who saw the fire from outside Le Constellation, told local media that many people inside had tried to break through the windows, according to British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail.

"It was a real flame coming out. It was coming out and ... in fact, people were running through these flames," he said. "You could see the shadows. People were trying to break the glass with chairs in the bar."

Another witness, who chose not to share his name, told CBS News' partner network BBC News that he thought his brother was in the bar when the fire broke out.

"I came and tried to break the window to help people to exit, and after that I went in," he told the BBC. Inside, he said he "saw people burning ... I found people burning from head to foot, no clothes anymore."

He said his brother had not been hurt, and that he could easily have been in the bar himself.

"I went in this bar every day this week," he told the BBC. "The day I didn't go, it burned."

Oscar, 19, also witnessed the fire and told Sky News Le Constellation was "a very popular bar with teenagers, so I think it's a highly concentrated place where you find a lot of teenagers. That's why we wanted to go there."

He said he and his friends had tried to get into the bar on New Year's Eve, but had been told it was full.

"But we knew, like, other ways in," Oscar said.

He said he tried using a code to access a side door, and getting someone already in the bar to open another entrance for him and his friends, but nothing worked.

"Like three minutes later, we're just in front, like three meters away - it exploded. It's crazy," said Oscar. "Many people tried running out and people were banging on the windows, because it's like a winter garden … It's like a semi-outside spot but still with windows. And everyone was banging on the windows and stuff. Screaming. It was like a horror movie. But they couldn't get out. I think the windows were too thick. Then people, like, fell on each other coming out, fully burned."

"Even people ask me: Am I burned in my face, am I burned?" Oscar recalled. "Because I think the adrenaline made them not feel anything. Because they were completely, I don't know, fully burned and they didn't feel anything."

Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the EU Commission, said the EU would help provide medical assistance to the victims of the fire through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism.