Firefighters honoured for saving Notre-dame
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday hailed as “exemplary” hundreds of firefighters who saved Notre-dame in the devastating blaze, as efforts intensified to ensure there was no further damage to the still fragile cathedral.
Some 600 firefighters worked throughout the night Monday to put out the fire at the Paris landmark and prevent an even worse disaster, in a blaze that felled the spire and destroyed two-thirds of its roof.
Sixty firefighters are still keeping a vigil at Notre-dame to ensure no further fire erupts while France’s culture minister warned that two gables and figurines perched high up in the building were still at risk of collapse inside.
Dressed in ceremonial uniform, the firefighters and other emergency workers filed into the Elysee Palace for the closed-door meeting with Macron.
“The country and the entire world were watching us and you were exemplary,” Macron said. “You were the perfect example of what we should be,” he added.
He said the firefighters would be awarded France’s golden medal of honour in recognition of their “courage and devotion”.
Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo was also to pay tribute to the firefighters and others who helped save the 850-year-old gothic masterpiece, in a ceremony from 1430 GMT outside the city hall.
The ceremony will see a reading of Victor Hugo’s celebrated novel The Hunchback of Notre-dame (called simply Notre-dame de Paris in the original French) about the deformed Quasimodo that helped turn the building into a cultural, as well as religious icon.
Culture Minister Franck Riester said on Thursday that even three days after the fire there remained concerns that parts of the building could collapse.