Notre Dame Cathedral On Fire

[JasonJ]

Sad to see the images of it burning. It'll be restored no doubt but a proper restoration is going to take years.

[Brian Kennedy]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1117844987293487104

[Jeff]

French prosecutors have declared the fire not deliberately set and was accidental. They also say they'll conduct an investigation to confirm their conclusion.

 

Cart => horse

[Murph]

Tragic, just tragic a loss for all mankind.

[Mikel2]

It is surprising that a national treasure like Notre Dame was so lacking in fire-fighting systems. The reaction from the fire department doesn't appear to have been stellar either.

[R011]

Tragic, but as has been noted, a number of historic cathedrals were destroyed in the 1940s and have been rebuilt. It's probably worth the money to rebuild just for tourism's sake.

[Mikel2]

Tragic, but as has been noted, a number of historic cathedrals were destroyed in the 1940s and have been rebuilt. It's probably worth the money to rebuild just for tourism's sake.

 

They are surprisingly robust structures (Cologne here)

 

 

It's the countless pieces of art that have vanished that will be most difficult to replace. I wonder how much the building suffered during the French Revolution, as the Temple of Reason.

[Harold Jones]

It is surprising that a national treasure like Notre Dame was so lacking in fire-fighting systems. The reaction from the fire department doesn't appear to have been stellar either.

 

This thread might prove instructive https://twitter.com/GreggFavre/status/1117847726786371585

[DKTanker]

 

It's the countless pieces of art that have vanished that will be most difficult to replace. I wonder how much the building suffered during the French Revolution, as the Temple of Reason.

 

A firefighter was quoted as saying all the magnificent stained glass windows were lost.

 

Edit: Having just seen some interior post-fire photos, at least some of the windows remain intact.

Edited April 16, 2019 by DKTanker

[Simon Tan]

You can rebuild. See Tsarskoye Selo.

[R011]

 

It's the countless pieces of art that have vanished that will be most difficult to replace.

 

 

Apparently the art, which likely includes the reliquaries etc. has been saved.

[DesertEagle]

What a sad story. Notre Dame is more than a cathedral or tourist spot. The square in front is point zero in France. I've visited a few times, always enjoying the walk up the narrow staircase to one of the towers. Everything about Notre Dame from the architecture to the organ and the gargoyles is fascinating. At least one firefighter was injured seriously. Hope for a full recovery.

[Harold Jones]

 

 

It's the countless pieces of art that have vanished that will be most difficult to replace.

 

 

Apparently the art, which likely includes the reliquaries etc. has been saved.

 

I was wondering if they decided that there was no way to effectively fight the fire on the roof and decided to give priority to getting the art out and held back on dumping water on it until the art was safe.

[Mobius]

All these museums with irreplaceable items should have non-water fire extinguishers that the average computer room of the 1980s had.

[Martin M]

Pretty big building for automatic extinguisher system.

 

It seems to me :

Construction work with welding and cutting and no after work fire watch or even temporary fire detection equipment put up. Pretty careless and unprofessional for such an important building.

 

 

(Fire during / after construction work should be a major fire cause in statistics. Also a good time for deliberate action.)

Edited April 16, 2019 by Martin M

[Stuart Galbraith]

Many thanks to Mr Moderator or whoever it was for fixing the title. I promise to get that finger trouble fixed in future.

 

They many have dodged a bullet. Last night they were saying if the North Tower went, which is the left hand tower, it would be a total loss. And there were flames inside it, which you could see on the TV footage. Somehow the French Fire Brigade got up there, and you saw it in seconds being reduced to steam and they managed to save it. So you have the facade and the bell's, which is quite a lot left to work with. The spire is a sad loss, but it was victorian, and not part of the original building. Perhaps an opportunity for a 21st Century architect to make their contribution.

 

They were saying on BBC that this is more than St Pauls in London burning down, this is kind of like losing Parliament and maybe the Tower of London as well. Its endured so much, and then goes up like this from a silly accident.

 

Kind of shows the value of flying buttresses as an architectural feature I guess. They are the main reason why Coventry Cathedral is still standing, sort of.

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

Tragic, but as has been noted, a number of historic cathedrals were destroyed in the 1940s and have been rebuilt. It's probably worth the money to rebuild just for tourism's sake.

 

They are surprisingly robust structures (Cologne here)

 

 

It's the countless pieces of art that have vanished that will be most difficult to replace. I wonder how much the building suffered during the French Revolution, as the Temple of Reason.

 

 

It was stripped out. So much of whats in the interior would appear to date from after then. The main loss would appear to be the windows, so its a relief that some of them have survived.

 

I remember that Napoleon had at least one of the bells melted down to make cannon ball's. That was only just replaced a few years ago.

[sunday]

Some points I've gleaned:

 

- Fire started after workers left the site.

- Not the first time the rose windows have been destroyed.

- Inner ceiling of the nave is mainly unaffected.

- Most of the art treasures, and relics were saved, as R011 wrote.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Report on CNN that the organ 'Might possibly' have survived and is restorable. Supposedly many of the pews inside also seem to have survived, remarkably. But I guess we wont know the extent of the damage till we see photos of the interior.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Reportedly on CNN, all the key windows have been saved. On the negative side, the roof was supposedly made from a wood that is no longer available.

Edited April 16, 2019 by Stuart Galbraith

[Murph]

Ok, I am very happy they saved so much, now the rebuilding begins. As for the wood, I suspect the world can help find some. Thank G_d that the stained glass has been saved.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Well sadly not all of it, clearly the rose window has gone, which clearly had elements of 12 and 13th Century glass in it.

http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Paris-N-Dame/table.htm

 

That said, there is still a great industry dedicated to keeping windows like this alive. If anything, the skill set has improved in recent years. I gather recent restorations to York Cathedral have succeeded in repairing some fairly heavy handed bodging in the 1950's. So either side of the Channel there is more than enough skill set to put it back together.

 

Speaking of Yorkminster, there was a bad fire there in 1984, that required a lot of restoration.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/9/newsid_2498000/2498525.stm

Its clear that what happened to Notre Dame is considerably worse. The entire roof there looks to be gone.

[Jeff]

Perhaps an opportunity for a 21st Century architect to make their contribution.

 

 

That could be a worse disaster than the fire.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Not really. The spire that they put on it was a 19th Century addition. I dont think anything, barring perhaps a mobile phone mast, would be any worse.

 

Rose window seems to have survived, though there may have been damage to it. The one above it seems to be gone however. There is a report that some paintings have also been lost.

 

Interior photographs seem to show that at least some of the vaulting has survived. So they seem to have quite a lot to work with.

 

 

 

Report on the BBC that they didnt want to close it down for full restoration because they were frightened of turning away tourists. Which seems to have been a short sighted decision to put it mildly.

[Ivanhoe]

https://www.wired.com/story/the-notre-dame-fire-and-the-future-of-history/

As a landmark, Notre Dame lives on in uncountable drawings, paintings, and photographs, not to mention the memories of people who visited, worshipped, and listened to music amid its incomparable acoustics. But because it survived largely intact into the digital era, Notre Dame lives on in the virtual world, too—and that may make its restoration all the more complete. For the last half-decade or so, an architectural historian named Andrew Tallon worked with laser scanners to capture the entirety of the cathedral’s interior and exterior in meticulous 3D point clouds. His billion points of light revealed a living structure; the magnificent flying buttresses had indeed held the walls true, but the Gallery of Kings, statues on the western facade, were a foot out of plumb, Tallon told National Geographic in 2015.

https://nypost.com/2019/04/15/french-billionaire-pledges-more-than-100m-to-help-rebuild-notre-dame-cathedral/

François-Henri Pinault — chairman and CEO of Kering, the French-based luxury group behind Gucci, Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent and other world-renowned brands — has pledged over $110 million towards the rebuilding of the Notre Dame cathedral.

Pinault, who is married to actress Salma Hayek, said in a statement that he plans to pay through his family’s investment firm, Artemis, for any work that needs to be done following Monday’s catastrophic fire, according to AFP.