Unanswered phones and painful questions haunt Swiss resort as police open criminal inquiry against bar managers

The flames of Le Constellation touched far too many young people on New Year’s Eve.

Even so, the scars of that night already run much wider than the bar.

In the days since the blaze, locals told CNN they were lost in the what ifs of that night: last-minute changes of plans, choosing to celebrate outside the crowded bar or with family instead of friends.

“It should’ve been us”; “I was supposed to go too”; “My siblings were there the night before,” locals told us in the days after the fire.

Now, those who were texting with presumed victims just hours before the disaster are glued to their phones: locked in a desperate wait for any information about friends who simply don’t reply any more.