Did Our Lady burn because of poor security?

Were there serious security issues in Notre Dame Cathedral before the devastating fire of last week? The satirical weekly newspaper The chained Duck says that there have certainly been major failures, and they give a list. . .

In the first place, security guards at the monument located in central Paris lost 35 minutes after the first alarm before calling the fire department.

The two officials sent to examine the roof as a result of the first smoke detector alert were mistaken for part of the vast structure and therefore saw nothing.

The faithful attending Mbad were surprised by the sudden acceleration of the priest celebrating, who was informed at 6:16 pm of a potential problem and told him to finish the job in five minutes and bring out the people. It was done. Calmly and without panic.

A few minutes later, at 6:21 pm, it was announced that there had been a false alarm and the evacuees were asked to come back.

At around 18:30, the fire alarms went off again and fragments of ashes began to fall in the cathedral from the roof under the spire. This time, people do not need encouragement to leave.

A series of stupid delays

Somewhere between 18:40 and 18:50, the two officials roaming the heights finally discovered the fire at the base of the spire. Firefighters were finally called at 18:51.

Emergency services took less than nine minutes to reach the cathedral. But the additional delay due to the inability to respond correctly to the first alarm meant that the fire was already well established before the firefighters arrived.

The Chained Duck says the detectives in the criminal brigade think that an electrical short circuit was the most likely cause of the disaster.

They examined the lift motors and electrical installations needed for scaffolding surrounding the boom, which was a construction site at the time of the fire. But none of this equipment is at the presumed point of the epidemic.

The investigators talked to the workers about scaffolding, where it was strictly forbidden to smoke. Only to discover seven butts, and several confessions that smoking actually occurred occasionally on the elevated site. Nobody worked on the site at the time of the fire.

"Bells, bells!"

Then there is the bizarre situation of temporary bells.

The Duck states that, despite a strict rule prohibiting such an installation in any historic building, the roof of Notre-Dame housed several bells, all activated by electrical circuits that snaked through the dust and debris of the wood. . superstructure.

One set was located just above the transept, that is the piece of a church that forms the arms of the cross, so much further back than the presumed source of the fire of Notre-Dame. Lady.

But the other set, three bells also activated by electricity, was at the base of the spire. They were extinguished in 2012 to be put back into service at the beginning of the works on the main steeples in the two towers of the cathedral.

Their installation was authorized, against all safety regulations, by the regional director of cultural affairs. But the agreement was purely temporary. Once the work on the main bells had been completed, these three devices should have been permanently extinguished.

According to Le Canard Enchaîné, these three bells sounded the day of the drama during the mbades of 8h, 9h and 12h. And they also sounded, tragically for the last time, at 6:04 pm, exactly twelve minutes before the first fire alarm was sounded.

In addition to the snake's son's nest leading to the installation of the bell, the investigators found that the scaffolding around the boom was planted in the area occupied by these wires, which could accidentally damage the cables and other wires. electrical equipment.

Although the cathedral's fire protection plan includes the requirement to have two state employees permanently in the sacristy, there has never been one. more than one employee by a private security company.

And he worked from 8 in the morning to 11 in the evening. How safe the cathedral was supervised by the concierge from his bed.

The so-called "dry" pipes, pipes permanently installed in all public buildings and used by firefighters to pump water to supply their pipes at higher levels, could only provide 500 liters per minute to Notre Dame, which is totally insufficient. the fire that the firefighters had to face. By the time the brigade members pulled out to get their own high-pressure equipment. . . five times more powerful. . . the roof was already irretrievable.