Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Notre Dame repairs to resume in Paris
PARIS — Workers are refitting the construction site at the fire-damaged Notre Dame Cathedral to protect staff from the virus and allow cleanup efforts at the Paris landmark to resume.
More than a year after the blaze, workers still haven’t finished stabilizing the medieval cathedral. And the coronavirus outbreak caused a new setback: Work on the cathedral halted in mid-March when France imposed strict confinement measures.
On Monday, workers began to rearrange the construction site to make it virus-safe, said an official with the state agency overseeing the project. The site is hidden from the public by high barriers.
That includes rearranging showers and cloakrooms to allow more distance between workers, and installing a place to eat because restaurants in France are closed, Notre Dame rector Monsignor Patrick Chauvet told reporters outside the site Monday. He said most workers will stay in nearby vacant hotels so they won’t have to take public transportation.
The cleanup work itself is scheduled to start gradually resuming next week. Chauvet said the priority will be taking down 250 tons of scaffolding that had been installed for a previous renovation project that was badly damaged in the blaze. The unstable scaffolding now endangers the Gothic jewel.
“It’s a difficult job. It requires the climbers to be calm,” Chauvet said. “We can’t have [covid-19] there to cause them stress.”