MINUTES FROM DESTRUCTION
MACRON VOWS TO REBUILD NOTRE DAME AS DONORS PLEDGE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS
PARIS • Notre Dame Cathedral was a half-hour away from collapsing before firemen prevented the inferno that destroyed its lacy spire and wooden roof from engulfing the bell towers, according to France’s deputy interior minister.
Laurent Nunez praised the actions of the firefighters on Tuesday but admitted the fate of the cathedral had been uncertain.
“They saved the edifice, but it all came down to 15-30 minutes,” Nunez said.
Authorities consider the fire an accident, possibly as a result of restoration work at the architectural treasure that survived 850 years of tumultuous French history but was devastated in the blaze on the second day of Holy Week.
Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz said the inquiry into what caused the fire would be “long and complex.” Some 50 investigators were working on it and would interview workers from five companies hired for the renovations to the cathedral’s roof, where the flames first broke out.
Investigators have already questioned nearly 30 people.
“All I can tell you is that at the moment the fire began none of my employees were on the site. We respected all procedures,” said Julien Le Bras, head of the family firm Le Bras Brothers in charge of the four-year restoration.
Heitz said an initial fire alert was sounded at 6:20 p.m. Monday but no fire was found. The second alert was sounded at 6:43 p.m., and the blaze was discovered in the wooden framework of the attic, ancient beams beneath the lead roof known as the “forest.”
Two police officers and one firefighter were injured in the fivehour battle to gain control over the blaze, but no one was killed.
News that the fire was probably accidental has done nothing to ease the national mourning for the symbol of national pride immortalized in Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
“Notre Dame has survived the revolutionary history of France, and this happened during building works,” said influential former culture minister Jack Lang.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said there were still some risks to the structure.
The cathedral is “under permanent surveillance because it can still budge,” Castaner told reporters after a brief visit inside.
Just 24 hours earlier, the oakand-lead roof was a crackling inferno overhead.
Firefighters rushed in, looking for whatever they could carry to safety. The fire department chaplain, Jean-marc Fournier, “showed no fear” as he entered the burning building to recover the Crown of Thorns, believed to have been worn by Jesus before his crucifixion.
“We made a human chain, with our friends from the church, to get all the relics as quickly as possible,” said Paris’s deputy mayor for tourism and sports, Jean-francois Martins.
Other objects, however, were undeniably lost. These include fragments of the remains of Saint Genevieve and Saint Denis, portions of which were installed in 1935 in architect Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-duc’s 19th-century spire, which collapsed at the height of the blaze.
Historians emphasized that the cathedral itself was an emblem — and even a crucible — for a certain architectural style and the advancements that came with it. Notre Dame was perhaps the iconic gothic aspiration, said Samantha Herrick, a historian of medieval France.
“A lot of features of this church, while not unique, were new at the time,” she said. “Stained glass was new, flying buttresses were new, Gothic architecture itself was new. This was a site of innovation.”
For the moment, the most pressing question is the state of the cathedral’s sprawling stained glass masterpieces — and particularly the three massive, multicoloured rose windows originally installed in the 13th century and heavily restored 600 years later.
Images showed that the rose windows technically remained intact, but the condition of the materials was far from certain. “Clearly, they were damaged, but to what degree we don’t yet know,” said Karine Boulanger, a specialist in stained glass at the Sorbonne University in Paris.
“Even if the fire didn’t come all the way down into the cathedral itself, the heat itself was very intense. And the heat will have impacted the glass, as well as the material that keeps the glass panels together,” she said.
Late Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron called for Notre Dame to be rebuilt. And almost immediately, some of France’s wealthiest families pledged their support. Bernaud Arnault, Europe’s richest man and the chief executive of the LVMH luxury conglomerate, pledged US$225.7 million; François Pinault, another luxury magnate, pledged $112 million.
But the donation pledges from wealthy private sources led to some criticism of the French state, which some felt should shoulder more of the burden to preserve such an important piece of national and religious cultural heritage.
“If Notre Dame is a symbol of France, of its history, of its art, it is also the property of the state. In that sense, if we can only rejoice in the generosity of great donors, we could only be proud that the State undertakes to finance this restoration fully, in these troubled times,” said Olivier Gabet, the director of Paris’s Musée des Arts décoratifs.