How The Fire Started
On December 4, 1971, Montreux Casino torched amid a show by The Mothers of Invention after a fan had set the scene ablaze with a flare gun.
The Casino was in this manner reconstructed, and amid the interval the Montreux Jazz Festival was held in different assembly rooms in Montreux, until the point that it could come back to the recently re-opened Casino in 1975.
The Festival kept on being facilitated there until 1993, when it moved to a bigger Montreux Convention Center found around one kilometer from the Casino. From 1995 through 2006, the Festival possessed both the Convention Center and the Casino. Starting with the 41st Festival in 2007, daily exhibitions of main events were again moved for the most part to the Convention Center, despite the fact that the Casino still has the odd coincidental show.
What Could’ve Gone Better
Safety protocols for a fire should have been set up properly. There was no assembly at the time to brief the crowd on fire safety. This happens to be the main cause of all the chaotic movements of the crowd that made a fire rescue operation ineffective.
The casino being made mostly out of wood also did not help the situation as the blaze spread very fast and could not be contained to one specified area. It was found out that even the routine safety inspection of fire extinguishers around the whole facility was not carried out as well.
Lessons Learnt From The Case
Each facility needs to be prepared for fire hazards or potential crisis of a fire starting in their facility. Safety protocols are very important to ensure that everyone gets out safely and the proper methods to contain fires are executed in a manner that would be sufficient to keep a building intact until the real fire fighters arrive at the scene.