RESTORATION RESUMES
Workers clean the area in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Monday. Specialists shoring up the firedamaged cathedral returned to the site Monday for the first time in nearly a month, this time wearing disposable underwear and other protective gear after a delay prompted by fears of lead contamination.
PARIS — Construction resumed at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Monday, weeks after authorities had shut the site down over worries about lead contamination linked to the fire in April.
The work restarted with stricter decontamination measures in place, but amid concerns that authorities still weren’t doing enough to contain the blaze’s toxic fallout.
Over 400 tons of lead roofing burned in the fire, releasing a cloud of lead particles into the air. City and national officials have been criticized for reacting slowly and failing to fully disclose the risk of contamination for people living or working in the area.
One environmental group has filed a lawsuit, accusing authorities of minimizing the risks for cleanup workers, apartment dwellers and schools in the dense neighborhood around Notre Dame.
“For us, what is at stake isn’t the speed of reconstruction but the protection of the population and workers,” said Benoît Martin, a representative for CGT, a large labor union, adding that “the issue remains for all of the people who work or live around the construction site.”
The building structure is still vulnerable — the Culture Ministry said several stones had fallen from vaults in the nave after a recent heat wave — and officials have denied negligence over the lead, saying they did their best to respond to an emergency.
Workers have also started to clean up an area of over 100,000 square feet around Notre Dame, which is still closed to the public and surrounded by tall barriers.
On asphalt, workers are using highly pressurized water mixed with a special compound to remove lead particles. For denser surfaces like granite, workers are using a special gel that is left to dry for several days before being removed along with any embedded lead particles.
Construction at the cathedral itself did not resume at full force Monday, and the Culture Ministry said that the pace would slowly pick up over the coming weeks as the new decontamination measures were implemented.
Those include the use of foot baths, showers and disposable wear to protect workers from lead and to keep toxic particles from spreading outside, along with strict checks on entering and leaving the site.
Workers are still shoring up the cathedral’s structure and removing metal scaffoldings that were around the spire at the time of the fire. Restoration work is not expected to start until next year.