[ad_1]
PARIS – In the cavernous cathedral Notre-Dame of Paris, the last mass of the day was held on Monday of Holy Week, when the first fire alarm sounded. It was 6:20 pm, 25 minutes before the heavy wooden doors were scheduled to close the visitors for the day.
The faithful, tourists and staff were driven out and someone went to check out the most vulnerable part of the medieval structure – the attic, a lattice of old wooden beams called "the forest" – but no fire was found, Remy Heitz, the Paris prosecutor, said Tuesday.
At 6:43 pm, another alarm sounds. It was just 23 minutes later, but when they returned to the attic, it was clear that they had a major problem: it was on fire. Soon, a large part of the roof and the delicate arrow rising above him were also engulfed by the flames, fanned by a strong breeze.
The way the fire broke out is now the subject of a intensive investigation conducted by the French authorities, who treat the disaster so far as an accident.
Much remains to be learned. But it is already obvious that Notre-Dame, irreplaceable for the heritage of France, lacked the basic fire prevention protections required in more modern structures and was grafted onto other ancient cathedrals elsewhere in Europe.
Some of these elements, such as fire stops or a sprinkler system, were absent by choice – so as not to alter the design of the benchmark or to introduce electrical wiring considered to be a greater hazard among the supporting woods. the leaded roof of Notre-Dame.
"There had been a systematic refusal to install something of electricity" in "the forest" because of the risk, said Pierre Housieaux, president of the Paris Historical Association. "Everyone knew that the attic was the most fragile part."
Inevitably, some of these decisions are called into question in the aftermath of a disaster that ravaged a gem of precious Gothic architecture for the entire world and left a gaping wound in the heart of Paris.
"The fire detection system existed, not the fire compartments," said Jacques Chanut, president of the French Building Federation, referring to structures commonly used elsewhere to contain flames. "This is a typical example of something we will have to think about tomorrow."
Regardless of how it started, the fire ran smoothly through the attic and roof, and the wooden structure inside the spire. The fiery arrow dominated the city like a Roman candle until it rocked, collapsing across the ceiling and into the cathedral.
When fiery pieces of the upper structure fell to the floor of the cathedral, some of the interior furniture also caught fire.
Firefighters deployed a robot equipped with tank-type treads and a camera to pull the pipes into the cathedral and direct the water towards the flames. Firefighters also used aerial drones to get a view, including thermal imaging, in hell.
Firefighters brought irreplaceable artifacts, such as candelabra, statues, furniture and religious relics such as a linen cloth associated with St. Louis. Tradition is the crown of thorns worn by Jesus. Mayor Anne Hidalgo explained having seen them pass treasures along with a human chain.
But in the absence of fire prevention measures at the cathedral, firefighters could only do a lot.
"The lack of fire safety allowed the fire to spread quickly," said Jean-Michel Leniaud, former director of the Ecole Nationale des Chartes, a French university institute specializing in science supporting historical work. "There were sprinklers everywhere, it could have been different, but there was not any."
Mr. Leniaud, who visited Tuesday inside Notre Dame, said that the state, which owns and maintains the cathedral, enforces fire safety rules for all buildings, but that "sometimes, they can be difficult to apply. "
Paradoxically, this may be particularly the case for some of its most expensive structures. "We have always hesitated to disfigure the monument in question," said Leniaud.
One of the reasons the fire swept the open space under the roof was that there was no barrier – sometimes called a firewall – to compartmentalize the fire until firefighters could arrive. said Jim Lygate, visiting professor in fire investigation at the University of Edinburgh. For this reason, he said, such barriers are legally required in similar structures in Britain.
This does not mean that Paris firefighters were unprepared for a potential calamity. Dozens of them regularly trained for such an emergency situation in Notre Dame. This proved to be essential for saving many of his treasures.
"We do not act without planning," said Gabriel Plus, spokesman for the Paris Fire Department. "We know the cathedral. So we know what to do in such a case. We know, for example, that we have to deploy boats on the Seine very quickly to pump large amounts of water. "
About 500 firefighters responded to the call, some of them deploying pipes and dragging them into the fire. A hundred of them have focused their efforts on safeguarding their religious and cultural treasures, said Mr. Plus.
"Once we realized that the roof would be partially lost, we tried to stop the fire in both towers, to limit the damage," he said.
Laurent Nuñez, the French Minister of the Interior, said that about twenty firefighters had risked their lives by entering the towers to fight the fire, "which saved the building. "
"For 15 minutes, half an hour, it could have gone one way or the other," he said.
The danger of a disastrous fire among the attic beams was well known.
"At the cathedral, we have fire wardens," Mgr. Patrick Chauvet, rector of the cathedral, said on the radio France Inter Tuesday. "Three times a day they go up under the wooden roof to make an assessment."
Notre-Dame had a firefighter on site, posted daily to a command post on the ground of the structure, and a security officer, said Andre Finot, spokesman for the cathedral. In case of alarm, the firefighter would send the security officer to the area where he rang.
Paris firefighters organized two exercises at Notre Dame last year, focused on safeguarding relics and works of art, said Mr. Plus.
Lt. Col. José Vaz de Matos, responsible for the inspection of French national monuments, said: "A lot of invaluable collections have been saved and secured." But big items, "some of which were hit by the fire," stayed inside, he said.
"At this point, we can not send our teams to recover them," he said.
By the end of Monday night, most of the damage had been done. But it was only Tuesday morning that firefighters declared the fire extinguished and firefighters spent the day monitoring hot spots and continuing to remove valuables from the building.
Franck Riester, the Minister of Culture, said Tuesday that the cathedral's famous rosettes do not appear to have been damaged. But there were three main holes in the ceiling, one of them caused by the collapse of the spire.
Before the fire, restoration work had begun and much of the building was sheathed with scaffolding, which was still under construction. Julien Le Bras, General Manager of Le Bras Frères, the company that manages the scaffolding of the cathedral, told the press that 12 employees were working on the site, but that there were none at the time of the fire.
Experts say that catering, which often involves combustible chemicals and power tools, still presents a fire hazard, much like electrical wiring.
Mr. Housieaux, president of the Paris Historical Association, noted that during the past decade, fires related to restoration work had destroyed the town hall of La Rochelle and the city of La Rochelle. Lambert hotel on the island St. Louis, one of the small islands of the Seine. in Paris.
The Notre-Dame Restoration Project was aimed at strengthening the spire and repairing some of the attic beams, said Olivier de Chalus, a construction engineer and volunteer guide at the cathedral. He described the structure under the roof as "the jewel of the cathedral, the true work of art inaccessible to many".
But experts say that the beams, many of which date from the construction of the cathedral in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, have become dry during their aging.
Experts will analyze the building to assess the risk of collapse, officials said. To stabilize it, it will probably be necessary to remove damaged scaffolds, build new ones and take steps to protect the mortar between stones, which may have been weakened by fire, from erosion during rainy weather.
Mr. Nuñez, the Deputy Minister of the Interior, said that although "in general, the structure holds", the inspectors have identified "vulnerabilities" in the arched ceiling and in a gable. north transept. He said five buildings on Cloister Street, which run north of the cathedral, had been evacuated for 48 hours as a precaution.
Mr Heitz said that nearly 50 investigators were employed to find the cause of the fire, but he warned that the investigation would be long and complex. Until now, he said, the assumption is that it was an accident.
"Nothing at this stage suggests a voluntary act," he said.
[ad_2]
Source link