Le Constellation Bar Fire

At the time of this writing, a fire in the Le Constellation Bar in Switzerland has left 40 dead and some 110 wounded. Images and videos are being posted of the fire and if true, it points out at a cheap material substitution combined with dumb use of sparklers inside the location.

The alleged starting point of the fire.

What is starting to catch fire in the ceiling, very probable initiated by the sparklers attached to the champagne bottles is supposed to be sound-absorbing acoustic paneling. I suspect that somebody went cheap and used convoluted foam box liners instead to save a Swiss franc or two.

Back maybe in the late 1970s, very early 80s, a company named Sonex introduced their foam sound-absorbing paneling and one of their selling points was its ability to resist direct application of flame and catch on fire. It was not a cheap product, but it worked great and it was safe and since then, other companies have similar products in the market with different shapes but the same principles of sound absorption and fire resistance.

And then we have convoluted foam box liners which look like sound absorbing panels (and may even do some sound absorption) but are definitely not fire resistant. If you have ordered Palmetto State Armory AR stuff, you probably have some of this packing material around the house.

And on the slightly ghoulish side, I wonder how many of the lives were lost because rather than beat hasty retreat at the sight of the first licks of flame in the ceiling, they decided to pull out their phones and try to be the first to share the event in InstaFaceTok.