Notre Dame cathedral is burning down.

https://twitter.com/pzf/status/1117837195950399488

Initial reports say that the roof and spire have collapsed.  Early blame is construction equipment as the cause.  I suspect they’ll look real hard at sabotage.

Lot of live streaming on Youtube- little seems to be done to fight it.  Not that there's any decent way to get water into the structure...

Sad- makes me thankful that we visited it when in Paris on a trip.

That’s horrific. An absolute tragedy. Far worse than the loss of the Glasgow School of Art, and that was bad enough to cry over. 

Heartbreaking.  Truly.

Over 12 million visitors per year.  It's a huge loss for the Church and Paris both.

WEll, one less iconic European destination off our list.

SIndy-Guy said:

Over 12 million visitors per year.  It's a huge loss for the Church and Paris both.

It’s actually a huge loss for humanity. And this is a non-believer talking. 

Damn On a related topic, I've just recently been thinking that the way humanity does museums is not smart. If we're going to jam all of our historically valuable stuff into centralized repositories, there should be much more serious protections against fire, vandalism, the occasional master theif, and even the odd sinkhole. But it seems that the average museum isn't much better protected from those things than any random business with some valuable things on the property.

To put this fire out, a certain orange fellow had an idea which I had also briefly considered: airdropping water from an forest-fire-fighting airplane. Then I thought about what slamming tons of water into a building at hundreds of miles an hour might do and put it out of my mind just as quickly. But what about airdropping water from helicopters. Decent idea?

GameboyRMH said:

Damn On a related topic, I've just recently been thinking that the way humanity does museums is not smart. If we're going to jam all of our historically valuable stuff into centralized repositories, there should be much more serious protections against fire, vandalism, the occasional master theif, and even the odd sinkhole. But it seems that the average museum isn't much better protected from those things than any random business with some valuable things on the property.

Except that most museums are protected by fire suppression systems.  Whereas most churches are not.  I wonder if some older churces will look into fire suppression systems for them....  

GameboyRMH said:

 But what about airdropping water from helicopters. Decent idea?

Just saw on another site, the one emergency subject that nobody wants to do is drop water from the sky- this coming from the locals in Paris.  I think the worry of other collapsing things due to the drop is quite high.

Seeing the embers come off- I would think that much of the fire effort is about preventing it to spread- the structure is totally gone.  As is everything inside- antiquities, art, symbols, everything gone.

The CBC live feed linked above mentioned  water drops. Apparently there are concerns that the structure won't take it. I don't think they can do anything else to get water inside, which has been one of the big problems.

This is a huge loss.

It's 759 years old I would be surprised if the structure could handle much pressure of a water drop. 

Duke said:

Indy-Guy said:

Over 12 million visitors per year.  It's a huge loss for the Church and Paris both.

It’s actually a huge loss for humanity. And this is an atheist talking. 

It is, but luckily this isn't a Library of Alexandria type event. Modern technology is a pretty wonderful thing given that these things do happen.

It still sucks.

GameboyRMH said:

...But what about airdropping water from helicopters. Decent idea?

Depends on the wind and the altitude you drop from.  Go high enough and it's effectively a heavy rain.

I do find it a bit likely though that France is not exactly loaded with water bucket equipped helicopters.  Heck, even in California, it would likely take a bit of effort to rangle one up in the fire off season. 

At this point it might have been worth the risk considering the roof fell in anyway.  Depends what point they knew they wern't putting it out with ground hoses.

Looks like the do have aircraft at least... some of which are pretty aggresive about scooping water!...

Did they at least get the Hunchback out alive?

In reply to aircooled :

They do have aircraft - wildfires in the South of France have been a huge problem for decades. If I remember my architectural lessons from high school correctly, the vaulted stone ceiling under the actual roof is the real structural part. I don't think dropping water on that with the limestone mortar having been cooked from the fire in the roof is going to do much for its structural integrity, though.

It' a big loss (atheist here), as it's one of few grand high gothic cathedrals left in France (Reims is another one). A lot of them got damaged or destroyed during the French revolution and the various unpleasantries when Germany and France lobbed explosives at each other.

The latest I heard is they are saying it can be saved, but I would imagine the reconstruction will take a LONG time.  Even if that can be done I wonder about the status of the artifacts and artwork inside.

I am glad we had the opportunity to visit Paris twice on Easter Sunday, hear the bells of Notre Dame, and see the church. 

A very sad day for humanity.

Sounds like the relics were saved at least.

Sprinkler systems are a great invention.

This whole episode is so sad. Annie and I visited this beautiful cathedral twice in the past ten years. We love Paris. We love Notre Dame. That's why we're in mourning tonight. We don't know why, or even how this happened. So many questions. Personally, I don't think the city of Paris, or France in general, had the proper equipment in place, nor did they have a proper emergency plan in place, to pre-empt this type of tragedy.  (Compare the fire equipment for high rise fires in the USA to the third-world crap they have in Paris). They really do have a lot to answer to. We probably won't ever know. I'm not even going beyond a simple natural accident answer to this. That's a "whole nuther" discussion, which probably wouldn't be condoned here.

If I were Macron, I'd find a way to pin the blame on the yellow vests. Hopefully, this was an accident and not deliberate no matter who is to blame. 

In reply to T.J. :

Well it's the second old Catholic church to burn in France in the last 2 months. I'm not pointing any fingers, as this time, but my guess is deliberate acts to further tensions.

Gary said:

This whole episode is so sad. Annie and I visited this beautiful cathedral twice in the past ten years. We love Paris. We love Notre Dame. That's why we're in mourning tonight. We don't know why, or even how this happened. So many questions. Personally, I don't think the city of Paris, or France in general, had the proper equipment in place, nor did they have a proper emergency plan in place, to pre-empt this type of tragedy.  (Compare the fire equipment for high rise fires in the USA to the third-world crap they have in Paris). They really do have a lot to answer to. We probably won't ever know. I'm not even going beyond a simple natural accident answer to this. That's a "whole nuther" discussion, which probably wouldn't be condoned here.

Every modern building also has their own fire suppression system of some type.  And given how much wood is in the roof structure, I'm not sure any plan other than some amazing sprinklers would have saved it.