Crans-Montana: Swiss president addresses nation in open letter

Economics Minister Guy Parmelin, who holds the rotating Swiss presidency this year, addressed the people in an open letter. Keystone-SDA

In an open letter to the Swiss population on a national day of mourning, President Guy Parmelin has promised to draw lessons from the fire disaster in Crans-Montana.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

“We owe those affected, their families and loved ones respect, remembrance, and the obligation to do everything we can to ensure that such a catastrophe does not happen again,” he wrote in a letter that first appeared in the Schweizer Illustrierte on Friday.

The authorities are currently investigating the extent to which safety regulations were disregarded and will draw the consequences, he said. “We owe this to the victims and their families.”

+ Preparations ready for Swiss day of mourning for fire victims

Parmelin expressed his sincere condolences to them. He said he bowed his head to all those “who were lucky enough to survive the fire disaster, but are now only at the beginning of a long road to recovery”.

He paid tribute to all the people “who have helped in many different ways”. No country could cope with such an exceptional situation on its own, he said.

Adapted from German by AI/ts

How we work 

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail]