One of the most harrowing survivor accounts to emerge from the New Year’s Eve fire at Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana has come from a 16-year-old French teenager who lost nine friends in the blaze and escaped by smashing a window with his bare hands.

Speaking from his hospital bed in Sion, where he is recovering from smoke inhalation and minor burns, the boy — identified only as Ferdinand D. to protect his privacy — recounted the final minutes inside the venue in a quiet, trembling voice that has left listeners around the world in tears.

“I pulled a table over and flipped it to protect myself from the flames,” he said. “The smoke was so thick I couldn’t see anything. I heard my friends screaming, calling my name. I tried to find them, but the heat… it was like the air was burning. I couldn’t breathe. I just kept thinking, ‘I have to get out, I have to tell someone.’”

Ferdinand had been celebrating the new year with a group of ten friends from Lyon when the fire erupted at 1:30 a.m. on January 1. The group was on the upper level when the ceiling foam ignited, creating a flashover that spread flames in seconds. He remembers the moment the lights went out, the screams, the sudden wave of heat, and the panic as people rushed toward exits that quickly became jammed or blocked.

“I found a window,” he continued. “It was small, high up. I climbed on someone’s shoulders — I don’t even know who — and smashed the glass with my elbow. I cut myself badly, but I didn’t feel it. I just kept smashing until it broke. I climbed out and fell onto the snow outside. I turned back to help the others, but the fire was too strong. I heard them… and then nothing.”

Of the ten friends who entered the bar together, only Ferdinand survived. The other nine perished inside. He has spent the past week in hospital, undergoing treatment for lung damage and psychological trauma. Doctors say he will require long-term respiratory therapy, but the emotional scars may be far deeper.

Ferdinand’s decision to return to school on Monday — just nine days after the fire — has been described by his family as “his way of trying to reclaim some normalcy.” He attends a high school in Lyon and has told teachers he wants to be with his classmates again, even though many are still grieving the loss of friends. “He says staying home makes it worse,” his mother told French media. “He wants to be around people who understand.”

The footage of Ferdinand’s escape — captured on a bystander’s phone — has circulated widely despite efforts to limit its spread out of respect for victims’ families. It shows him tumbling through the broken window, collapsing in the snow, then immediately trying to crawl back toward the building before being restrained by rescuers.

His story has become one of the most shared survivor accounts from the tragedy, which has claimed 40 lives and injured more than 115. Ferdinand’s courage in returning to school so soon has been praised by psychologists as a healthy coping mechanism, though they caution he will need extensive counseling to process the loss of nine friends and the trauma of surviving when so many did not.

As Switzerland continues national mourning and the criminal investigation into the bar’s safety failures intensifies, Ferdinand Du Beaudiez’s words — “I couldn’t let them burn” — stand as a heartbreaking testament to the human instinct to protect those we love, even when the odds are impossible.

For a 16-year-old who should have been celebrating the new year with friends, the nightmare is far from over. But his determination to keep going — to return to school, to face the world again — offers a fragile glimmer of hope amid unimaginable grief.