![]() ![]() Miraculously, thanks to a small group of firefighters who volunteered to go back towards the intense heat – temperatures peaked above 1,200C – Notre-Dame was saved, and no lives were lost. As the world watched on, the flames spread to the belfries, and the complete destruction of one of the most visited buildings in Europe seemed inevitable. President Emmanuel Macron arrived in time to see the 19th-century spire collapse and crash through the vault of the nave. With no sprinkler system, nor fire walls to slow the spread, it was soon burning out of control. After a crucial half-hour delay, by which time smoke was being photographed billowing above the cathedral by tourists outside, the seat of the fire was discovered. Yet fire had taken hold – not in the sacristy, but in the attic of the nave, an area known as the “forest”, where a lattice of 900-year-old oak beams held up the roof. An evacuation announcement was brushed off as a false alarm, and worshippers were invited back into the building. ![]() He went to investigate what he understood to be a fire in the attic of the sacristy, and found nothing. The fire security officer, working a double shift on his first day on the job, read the panel and radioed to alert one of the guards. In the early evening of Monday, April 15 2019, as a Mass to celebrate Holy Week was being held at Notre-Dame in Paris, a fire alarm went off in the cathedral’s security control room. ![]()
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