Notre Dame roof repair is like ‘open-heart surgery’
A HIGH-RISK operation likened to “open-heart surgery” has begun on the roof of Notre Dame cathedral to remove tons of mangled scaffolding that melted in last year’s fire and still threaten the building with collapse.
Some 40,000 metal tubes weighing 200 tons had been erected on top of the Gothic building to repair its spire and roof before the blaze. In the intense heat, most of the scaffolding melted and fused, posing a conundrum for restoration workers. The spire and roof were also destroyed.
Yesterday, two five-man teams were lowered by ropes from a crane overhead and started carefully sawing off sections of the scaffolding.
Christophe Rousselot, director-general of the Fondation Notre Dame, said: “It’s a bit like open-heart surgery because we are in the middle of the cathedral between the transept and its heart, precisely where the spire crashed down.”
He also likened removing the tubes to Jenga, the game in which players seek to remove blocks from a tower without the structure crashing down.
“In a building like this you never know what might happen when you take one part away rather than another,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
The scaffolding was heated to temperatures of 800C during the blaze, some 130ft up, and has been melded to the cathedral’s limestone walls, which have been weakened.
The operation is due to last three months, but given the complexity “we cannot rule out further delays”, he said. “We will know whether the cathedral is in a sufficiently good state to have a new roof and frame at the end of 2020 when this first operation is deemed a success.”