The rebuilding is apparently going well, but this is hiding the fact that nobody seems to be doing any inquiry about why the fire wasn't stopped in time.
As far as we know, the fire was an accident (not foul play) -- but an extremely preventable one. There were works in progress on the roof of the cathedral, so people were coming and going, some of them possibly smoking, electrical devices were being used, etc.
And to monitor all this activity, there was only one guy, who had started on the job a couple of weeks earlier, who had received little to no training, and who didn't even know where the alarm was.
The point was to "save on costs", that is, in order to save maybe 1,300 euros / month over three months, the people in charge caused 1 billion euros of damage and lost irreparable historical artefacts.
There is a whole administrative department in France, whose sole responsibility is to make sure this kind of catastrophe never happens. At the very least, people should have been fired, from the site manager to the culture minister. Yet nobody's being investigated, let alone prosecuted or punished. Incredible.
> The rebuilding is apparently going well, but this is hiding the fact that nobody seems to be doing any inquiry about why the fire wasn't stopped in time.
Is this a true statement? I remember reading an extremely detailed play-by-play in one of the major papers a couple years ago that did a pretty good analysis of why a confluence of factors led to the fire. I don't know what the status is of any governmental, official investigation, but I at least saw some thorough investigative reporting from news organizations.
I agree with the sibling comment that this feels a little like scapegoating. Like many disasters like this, it wasn't just one thing, but a confluence of lots of little innocuous things (e.g. new guy on the job, can't remember all the details but maybe there was a phone number change IIRC, etc.) that led to the fire. Not saying a thorough investigation isn't warranted, but pretending these types of things are completely preventable is also a mistake IMO.
In the days following the fire, questions began to arise about what could have caused the fire and, also about the nature and extent of the fire detection and protection systems. It turns out Notre Dame had one of the most sophisticated and elaborate fire safety systems ever designed, befitting a landmark of its stature. A team of experts had spent more than six years and untold funds developing the fire protection plan. Yet, when the system was put to a real test, it failed in spectacular fashion. How this could have happened, and what lessons can be learned from this tragic event with be discussed in detail.
There was an inquiry about the direct causes of the fire, that concluded the initial "spark", so to speak, was indeed an accident. I agree with that.
> Is this a true statement?
Yes, I think it is, unless one can point to an inquiry, not about the fire itself, and how it started (which has been done), but about the chain of responsibilities of the people in charge of the construction site at the time of the fire.
My point is, having just one guy with no training and no experience, monitor a landmark of this importance, during major works on the roof, is incredibly careless and unprofessional and should have consequences. But apparently it doesn't.
Yep, to the modern administrative class "don't shit where you eat" is laughably old fashioned. Modernity brings a new contest: who can shit where they eat the most for the longest? Last one to get cholera wins! And don't worry about the actual cholera infection, that's what taxpayer bailouts are for!
"where you eat" is too vague to be actionable policy the real profit is in boundary pushing. Just how close can you get the shit to the food? In this century we will find out.
Its a waste of money you could actually help people instead. When Victor Hugo published his novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1831 nobody cared about Notre Dame. Anything of value had been stolen during the French Revolution and the Cathedral was in terrible repair.
I was in CDG airport in the 90s, shortly after they introduced a smoking ban, and gasping for a fag. So I went over to a check-in desk and asked the woman where the nearest smoking area was. She gave me a Gallic shrug and gestured to indicate the entire airport.
That was pretty normal behaviour across Europe right after those bans were invoked. Which happened decades ago, and has nothing to do with the Notre Dame fire.
If I hired a babysitter and on their watch, one of my kids caught on fire, yes, I'd insist on attributing that to the person whose one job it was to ensure their safety, and at least not hiring them again. Is that scapegoating or common sense? Nobody's saying they should get the guillotine, but perhaps they shouldn't be in the business of managing fire safety at the Notre Dame since it's obviously not something they're good at.
CV headline: "Oversaw safety at a national landmark -- Allowed only a single billion-dollar fire"
> If I hired a babysitter and on their watch, one of my kids caught on fire, yes, I'd insist on attributing that to the person whose one job it was to ensure their safety, and at least not hiring them again.
Interesting that the responsibility stops there. What about the person that hired the obviously incompetent babysitter? They don’t appear to have sufficient judgement to be responsible for kids.
I fear you may have taken my simplified hypothetical too seriously. Nobody is suggesting one man or woman bears 100% of the responsibility for what happened at Notre Dame. Yes, it's multiple people. They should all face some consequences if only not being trusted to do those jobs.
That would still raise a lot of questions right? Who hired the babysitter and what kind of vetting did they do? How did the fire start, was it due to poor maintenance and who was responsible for that? Why did none of the automated fire safety equipment work and who manufactured and installed that? Etc etc. it’s pretty pointless to just blame one person in the chain and call it a day
Seems like you get the point then. Yes, investigate and find the likely several people who have proven themselves unfit for their responsibility, and stop relying on them for that.
Intact historical buildings and artifacts are rare, because something like this is the expected outcome. People are careless and incompetent, except by accident.
Restoring a major historical building is always a one-off project. You follow the best practices, and the chance of a catastrophic outcome may be 10%, 1%, or 0.1%. You can't tell those scenarios apart in advance, because they all look very similar. Success is overwhelmingly likely. If a catastrophe occurs, the reason is often obvious in retrospect, and you will take that into account in the next project. But it clearly wasn't obvious in advance.
It has burnt down and been rebuilt many times in it's history.
Just like we are rebuilding with original stones and techniques, one should perhaps argue that it should also be rebuilt with its original fire resilience too - ie. Low.
At this point, a fire once every hundred years or so is part of the culture, and to stop doing that is in a way destroying the character of the cathedral.
Perhaps it's somewhat pragmatic. Churches are built to last by the standards of the era, and they're funded by generational resources by people who want to make a legacy, but churches are still victims of disaster at the ordinary rate. Earthquakes seem to claim significant victims even to the present day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Cathedral_of_St._Mary
The Christian view of fire is, of course, multi-faceted, as the Holy Spirit is a force for renewal, rebirth and purification. No parishioner wants their home burned down, of course, but at the end of the day, those are simply buildings, and they're replaceable, and every demolition is an opportunity to remake something new and wonderful.
In the same sense of like “innocent until proven guilty”
But is that the right lens to be looking through here?
What is the rate of accidental church fires, let alone at somewhere that is such a treasured location as this?
Then factor in, wasn’t there an ongoing spate of what were clearly church arson attacks going on at the time?
Then factor in what you were describing of what seems to be an inexplicably lackadaisical approach of getting to the bottom of what occurred, giving the impression of some wanting above all else to divert attention from what one would think to be the most pertinent questions about what occurred.
Then do the calculus of, okay, if it could be shown to be a clear cut case of being accidental why wouldn’t people in a position to do so, show that? That would have minimal, if any, political ramifications. Whereas the political ramifications of other possible causes of the fire would be much higher.
It raises some questions doesn’t it?
Why aren’t people in positions of influence on this matter and in political leadership doing what their office calls on them to do?
And given what can be observed of their actions what is one to make of their intentions?
Why aren’t they safe guarding and defending the nation’s culture and heritage? Why are they leaving it open and vulnerable to attack?
Are you saying “clearly not a unique occurrence” in regard to accidental, or arson?
I’m surprised at the 25% arson rate, that is considerably higher than I would have guessed, and when combined with the strange response as OP was pointing out, and the fact that there’s not a large subset of “No cause determined,” it would seem to tip the scale pretty strongly to arson being the most probable cause in this case.
Hating God, is hating the world, is hating yourself. No good reason for that.
If another earthly mortal connected to a church has done something you take issue with, take it up with that person, don’t damage or destroy a community’s property, heritage, and connection to the transcendent.
people here srsly advocating/justifying criminal, potentially homicidal activity, smh
1. How is "hating god" hating the world and yourself (lol), and 2. who tf is advocating for criminal activity here? You clearly have an axe to grind, so perhaps take it somewhere else.
>axe to grind
Surprised you would have that interpretation, didn’t mean that at all. Your tone here, and in other comments seems rather more hostile than mine.
>who tf
Unauthorized setting of fire to a structure is illegal, if someone is in or around the structure, it could kill the person.
“””
_People angry at churches
_with good reason
_get the torch
“””
That reads at the very least as justifying, if not advocating. It’s certainly not saying we should strive to handle our issues in healthy and productive ways.
>1. How is
The concept of God at the baseline level is equivalent and synonymous with existence. People over time in various cultures and traditions have agglomerated various flavours onto the concept of God , but at the baseline level, God = existence.
The essence of what God is, is that the concept comes from the desire or impulse to understand or make sense of “the world” / existence.
You are a part of existence.
And maybe not just “a part,” as you’ll see if you try to find the demarcation points that definitively separate you from the other parts.
You are the way in which awareness is aware of awareness.
“You” are the existence that gives rise to the feeling and observation of existence.
God = existence
If you hate God, you hate existence. If you hate existence, you hate yourself.
Better to love than hate, or perhaps even better to understand dichotomies.
Anybody with 2 brain cells to connect the dots know who and why they did it.
The reason the media and government were imposing the accident narrative while the cathedral was still burning is because this could have triggered the civil war.
This is also why the report on Bataclan massacre was not released to the general public, or why MLP was prosecuted for advocating terrorism (ffs) when she published pictures of terrorism acts condemning them on Twitter. The sheeps must sleep.
The censorship is also strong here: if I recall correctly I got a HN account banned here by the censor-in-chief for voicing my opinion on the matter at the time (which as a French I think is more informed than the random poster here).
> if it could be shown to be a clear cut case of being accidental why wouldn’t people in a position to do so, show that?
How would that even look like? The conclusion that it is most likely an accidental fire was not reached by finding something in particular, but by not finding evidence indicating a criminal motive.
> It raises some questions doesn’t it?
You are are certainly raising a lot of questions. If you think something why don't you spell it out?
> Why aren’t they safe guarding and defending the nation’s culture and heritage? Why are they leaving it open and vulnerable to attack?
Why are you talking about an attack? Who attacked the church in your opinion and how?
What in particular would you like to be done by whom?
Ok but the fact of there being some construction going on is somewhat ancillary to the whole point being made of the various factors observed and at play here that come together and raise some questions. I could have easily left the “what is the rate” part out, and the points made would have been just as strong or stronger.
And yes there was some sort of maintenance/construction going on, and if that played a role in the fire one would think at some point in the intervening years between then and now someone would have shown how it played a role.
Workers were smoking in a space where it was explicitly not permitted, and renovation work meant there was electrical supply where "normally, no electrical is allowed in the roof space because of the extreme fire risk".
Pinpointing the exact source of ignition is a bit challenging given the fire and collapse, I suspect, but without any evidence pointing towards arson it seems like a pretty reasonable conclusion.
Were they smoking there in the moments immediately preceding the fire, and a dropped cigarette and maybe some sawdust or something somehow ignited a 35cm or whatever wide beam? And the smokers didn’t notice? But I think the answer is there weren’t any construction workers around in the time before the fire to be smoking anyway.
“Maybe it was an electrical thing or something” is far from conclusive evidence, and as OP was saying, completely incredible as a response to an event of this magnitude that attracted worldwide attention.
>pinpointing
I’m always surprised when I hear what fire forensics can figure out given the state of the evidence being worked with.
>any evidence pointing toward arson
The whole point of my original post was that all the circumstantial evidence points toward arson.
>and a dropped cigarette and maybe some sawdust or something somehow ignited a 35cm or whatever wide beam? And the smokers didn’t notice?
You clearly don't know how fire works and just how quickly it spreads. You also vastly underestimate how flammable the roof material was.
>all the circumstantial evidence points toward arson
Pray tell them, instead of slinging vague provocations. Better yet, if you have such clear evidence, I'm sure you're gonna go to the police or the papers with it, right?
The evidence that he is Catholic and there is a war on the West and therefore some foreign migrant construction worker did it on purpose as an attack on christian cultural heritage.
I'm reminded how literally within an hour of the fire breaking out, the news was telling us all _very clearly_ that it was an accident - a fact that they clearly could not possibly have known at that time given the flames were still rising and no investigation could possibly have been done.
Can you point to a source that shows that news was reporting that it was an accident within hours, and not stating that there is no appearance of foul play/terrorism.
"This doesn't appear to be a terrorist attack" is a normal thing to say in a city and country where terrorist attacks are somewhat common.
It can have been an accident, or not. If not, well there were a lot of arsons happening at the same , maybe, so it most likely was arson. Not calling it arson is clearly political. And that means it was arson, because people in power and the establishment cannot be trustesd. It also means the arson was caused by politians, and those people in power not protecting us. Because they fail to do their job
You are aware that the moment the fire actually was an accident, the other 90% of your comment are pretty close to a conspiracy theory?
Asking for an investigation that wasn't done isn't a conspiracy theory. Pointing out that the investigation should have been done, since arson in churches is very common, isn't a conspiracy theory.
The fire was investigated, the fire protection system, an unorganized mess build over decades, was analyzed. I have no idea what people are talking about when they claim it was arson, it was not.
They're using ordinary power tools, such as bandsaws and sanders. There's some hand tool work on the connections between beams. It looks like cabinetmaking carpentry on a larger scale, with lots of chiseled joints.[1]
The real hand work is on artistic stonework. That really is being done by hand. Omni CNC's proposals to make replacement parts with their stone-cutting computer controlled milling machines were turned down.[2]
And for good reason. Machining stone masonry for a cathedral, when you actually have a ton of people being really good at doing it by hand, is somewhat like Musk's cave submarine.
For some reason English folk restoring French châteaus came up on my YouTube feed and I kind of like watching them.
Being able to hire craftspeople who can do things “the old way” is apparently very important when dealing with (the bureaucracy around) old buildings. A lot of these buildings were built, rebuilt and expanded over centuries so they have different construction techniques between different areas which also needs specialized knowledge.
I came here to share that the importance of using contemporaneous materials, if not methods, was highlighted for me when I worked on Bath cathedral and saw how the victorian 'improvements' of using iron rather than wood to fix the stonework caused much damage a century later; iron expands when it rusts and causes cracking.
Then I see linked in that article that Notre Dame was a very early example of using iron staples! I can only think that they were used away from water, unlike Bath, where the repairs were on the window fixings.
They also rely on medieval era trees to reconstruct it, as the more than 1000 oak trees painstakingly sought through entire France had to be more than 1 m wide. Okay not medieval - they are only about 200 years old. Could have made a nice title though.
In the 1950s, Lund Cathedral bought the quarries where the stone for it originally came 900 years ago, so they know they have a source of the right stone for renovations.
That's really sad. What a shame cutting down 1k large old oaks for any building at all. It's not necessary these days. Of course they need some wood in publicly viewable areas, but this amount of not only wood but large old oak trees is excessive and concerning.
Is there any indication that they're improving the structure so it will be more fire proof? Or are they simply restoring it to the configuration that already failed?
> Or are they simply restoring it to the configuration that already failed?
780 years is not that bad for a building. (or, more precisely, the roof frame)
Macron & co had some idea for new things. They were all horrible. While I do think with good taste one could do some new things nicely ( e.g maybe a titanium-based roof instead of the lead one ), a restoration is the next best choice when proposed new things are crazy ugly/out-of-touch.
Btw, in our age, and since at least the early middle-age in France and old Europe, the use of old, large trees is the main political reason to keep alive some old, large forest with old trees.
For ordinary wood they do plantations of fast-growing stuff and cut at maybe 40y or so.
The only electrical fire vector they needed to worry about 780 years ago was lightning storms.
I'm not proposing ugly or out of touch changes. Materials changes like titanium instead of lead are exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. Not all of the oak will be in publicly viewable areas.
I'm surprised and disappointed you don't keep forests around simply to benefit nature and humanity without needing a pretext of building construction.
Titanium is a, extremely expensive, alternative to steel and aluminium when strength and weight are an issue. I literally never heard anyone propose to replace lead with it...
Oak don't grow straight naturally, so all most all tall 1 meter thick oak trees were planted and are crops. If you don't cut some down now and replant there will be no tall 1 mete wide oak trees in 200 years time. Most European forests are cultural landscapes that are actively harvested and renewed.
Not exactly in its most recent configuration that failed.
The people in charge are so concerned about historical accuracy they need to cut down a thousand large oaks, but their predecessors weren't so concerned about historical accuracy when they retrofitted a medieval structure with the electrical wiring that ended up causing it to burn down.
The wiring that were installed in the oak structure, if they are the cause for a short that ultimately caused the fire, were contrary to regulation in the first place and were only meant to be installed temporarily.
The cutting down of 1000 year oaks is sad. Perhaps we can have the perspective that these trees lived fulfilling lives and the younger trees deserve centuries?
And after all the Notre Dame is also a very historically significant building
My grand mother [1] has tracked down many of those oaks and produced imprints [2] of their barks as a tribute to the trees and also to the (both public and private) owners of the forests in which the trees have been cut.
At least 1k oaks were harvested from forests everywhere in France. [3] The majority of them were given for free to help in the rebuilding, and trees of this age/dimensions/quality are definitely not cheap. Both the cutting and moving of such trees -- between 6 and 13 meters, up to 15 tons! -- requires careful planning and flawless execution as they need to be taken out of the forests and preserved during their journey to the sawmill [4] in the North of France. (Here is also an interview of the sawmill operators [5].)
Crazy and fascinating project involving several rare craftsmanships.
Whatever happened to the many hundreds of millions French billionaires said they would donate for it? I know a couple have coughed up, and most of the companies who said they would have but I don't all who promised to do so have.
I've seen some videos on TikTok by stonemasons who are re-building the decorative shapes in chunks of marble; it's very cool to watch and see them doing it.
It's probably not even remotely economic or "productive", but sometimes that's OK.
The whole building isn't economic or productive. They could probably make more money tearing it down and replacing it with a Starbucks.
The vast majority of human activity isn't productive. And that's awesome. We've got so much wealth that we can afford to use it on things that are merely pretty or interesting, like video games and space telescopes and flowers.
It would be nice if we could use more of it to ensure that people have the basics, but that's rarely about lack of money. It's nearly always due to some more systemic problem that can't be fought just by throwing money at it.
Admission was free to the cathedral itself, though you needed to pay to visit the roof.
Of course it was a draw to Paris in general. It's hard to measure its impact, since the cathedral fire coincides with COVID, but Paris tourism has nearly reached pre-pandemic levels and remains the most-visited city in the world.
I don't honestly believe it would be a net economic benefit to put a Starbucks there. But more to the point, the whole thing is there just because people like to look at it. That's all the "productivity" it needs.
And what does "economic impact" means? A bunch of people burning jet fuel to get there and spend some hours looking at it? Why not working towards helping other people?
Buying from the cafes nearby. Patronizing the hotels. Going to see a show after. All the things one does in the neighborhood around a tourist attraction.
A week-long golf tournament in my town brings in 200k+ people and local government touts a $190M economic impact number for that. I'm sure it's fudged to be as high as possible, but pretending Notre Dame doesn't have an economic benefit to Paris would be odd.
Money means nothing. Human time is what matters. Consider that back at their place of origin things did not get done. Economic impact means nothing. If I gave you $100 to watch me do nothing, what value this transaction created? There is virtually nothing to show for at the end but we created $100 of economic impact...
I have always been disgusted by this sort of low, mediocre, pseudo-moral argument. "Why build these grand churches? You could feed people with that money!" "Why put all this effort into beautiful buildings? You could build more low-income housing for the same cash!" It sickens me.
We can do both. Man does not live by bread alone. Utilitarian mediocrity is satisfied with a full stomach and keeping warm.
Yes, it is the lack of action. People are selfish. End of story. We have the tech and knowledge to fix it all, but burning a ton of kerosene to travel to the other side of the world for 2 a weeks vacation is more desirable.
Funny, how the knowledge about cathedral building was rather well preserved. After all, all cathedrals still standing have a cadrebof employed masons and other artisans to maintain and renovate them. The actual building is dofferent, I assume an lot of that will be rediscovered during the Notre Dam restauration.
It's my belief that the underpinning design principles have not been lost - cathedrals are quite well studied by architects as I understand it.
So, while some of the specifics are probably having to be identified and re-implemented, the basics are broadly understood. Stonemasons as a mass-employer has gone away, but like blacksmithing there are still individuals out there who carry on the tradition.
They could care about being left with something that is qualitatively worse than what burned down during our time because people chose to cut corners.
Now, does using a powersaw instead of a handsaw produce qualitatively worse results? I have no idea. I know nothing about woodworking. And I’ve certainly never worked on restoring or rebuilding any kind of monument. Let alone a centuries old one.
Perhaps they consider it to be important to set what they see as the proper mindset? Perhaps it’s just for show? Or to tell them themselves they did it the best they could? Perhaps there is an objective technical justification?
How could I know? The closest I’ve ever come to cutting wood was using some hydraulic wedge thing at the back of a tractor.
So I’m not arguing and will not be arguing about the specifics of their choices in tools and techniques. That’d be vain and pointless, and I could not argue in good faith.
Which is fine, because the technique is not my point.
My point sole is that, despite it being a building, there can still be an ethical imperative.
There are many solutions in old hand-tool woodworking that were elegant back then, and are still more relevant today than spinning a tool at 20k RPM.
Example: when removing waste with a chisel for joinery, going cross-grain allows popping large chunks with ease, rather than route them to dust. And it's a lot of fun!
Power tools do have a use for repeatability and mass-production, which may be useful in the Notre Dame build, but I find the carpenters' approach more honorable.
As a woodworker, I get what your saying but calling the approach of using older methods as “more honorable” kind of rubs me the wrong way. It’s not like the original builders had a choice of what to use, I would bet they would choose the modern stuff if you could somehow loan them the technology from the future. Using modern tools is not antithetical to craftsmanship, it’s about the care, attention to detail, designs choices, using appropriate materials/fasteners, etc. Not saying they have to change the look at all, but they can make good and faithful reproductions with modern tools that capture the essence of what was lost.
Cheap and quick has been the carpenter's mantra since the dawn of time. One look at the inside of an old piece of furniture shows how little effort went into things that weren't readily seen.
Mortise and tenon joints are fast and easy (read: cheap and quick) to make with a chisel and hammer. You can bet carpenters of old would be using nails and screws to build all kinds of things, if they were as cheap and abundant as they are now.
As a professional furniture maker, I assure you that cutting mortises by hand is not high on anybody's list of cheap and quick things to do. At the furniture scale, we've had foot and spring powered mortiser since before we had electricity. For timber framing and similar scales, most of the waste has been bored out with manual boring machines and then the rest of the mortise is finished by hand.
Chopping is a pain in the ass, and people have been doing their best to avoid it for centuries. Hell, we're still inventing new ways to cut mortises: see the Festool Domino, which is recent enough to still be protected by patents.
As far as we know, the fire was an accident (not foul play) -- but an extremely preventable one. There were works in progress on the roof of the cathedral, so people were coming and going, some of them possibly smoking, electrical devices were being used, etc.
And to monitor all this activity, there was only one guy, who had started on the job a couple of weeks earlier, who had received little to no training, and who didn't even know where the alarm was.
The point was to "save on costs", that is, in order to save maybe 1,300 euros / month over three months, the people in charge caused 1 billion euros of damage and lost irreparable historical artefacts.
There is a whole administrative department in France, whose sole responsibility is to make sure this kind of catastrophe never happens. At the very least, people should have been fired, from the site manager to the culture minister. Yet nobody's being investigated, let alone prosecuted or punished. Incredible.