Notre Dame Fire: Here's What You Need to Know

The Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, is a central landmark of France and one of the first thoughts associated with Paris. Having stood for over eight hundred years, it has become one of the most beloved landmarks in France, attracting around thirteen million visitors a year - that’s everyone who lives in Paris AND everyone who lives in Île-de-France combined. The Notre-Dame is considered a medieval jewel of Gothic architecture, with its two ornately decorated towers at the front, stained-glass windows all around, and three-hundred foot spire jutting into the sky.

If you want a comprehensive history of the Notre Dame Cathedral, click here. However, if you would prefer the fast facts so you can get onto reading about the fire-filled tragedy, here's what you need to know: Notre Dame was the life’s work of a man named Maurice de Sully, and was built over the course of 150 years, having started in 1182.  Over the years, it has undergone many modifications and renovations and rebuildings, but the most significant one was when it was destroyed during the French revolution in 1789. In 1844, it was rebuilt and restored.

On Monday, April 15, 2019, the Notre Dame caught fire. The cause is still unknown, but the fire started in the attic of the cathedral around 18:50 Paris time (12:50PM EST).  When the first fire alarm went off at 18:20, an initial investigation revealed no fire, and by the time the second alarm went off 23 minutes later, the fire had already spread drastically throughout the beams in the roof of the cathedral. Unlike a lot of the other large monuments and cathedrals in Paris (and the rest of the world), Notre Dame does not have a sprinkler system, fire walls, or any of the other modern safety procedures that limit and prevent fires. As such, after the fire had been discovered, firefighters were unable to do anything to stop the fire until it had burned all the way through the roof, at which point, they were able to begin hosing the fire. The fire then spread to the massive spire of Notre Dame, which collapsed clean off just thirteen minutes later. After the spire collapsed, France’s president rushed to the scene. Just as the president arrived, the roof of the Notre Dame completely collapsed in on itself - prompting the authorities to completely evacuate the island of Ile de la Cité.

The fire took over five hours and five-hundred firefighters to contain it, and even then, significant damage was done. The firemen were able to preserve the two west-facing towers that are widely considered the most iconic part of Notre Dame, but almost all of the thirteenth-century oak roof burned away, along with the three-hundred foot spire collapsing. The fire also interrupted President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to give a speech to his country on how to proceed in the wake of some protests; the speech was promptly canceled before it even began. Thankfully, no one was killed in the fire, but one firefighter was seriously injured.

In the aftermath of the fire, many French citizens were saddened beyond compare to see their city’s ‘beautiful lady’ destroyed. As such, many French business owners pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to help rebuild; then, many American companies followed suit. In just a few days, over 1 billion Euros ($1,120,525,000) was raised for the Notre Dame. However, maybe the most impressive pledge came from video game Assassin's Creed designer, who apparently has a very realistic Notre Dame in his game. He says that he designed the online Notre Dame over a period of fourteen months, and comprised the structure off of scans to make it as realistic as possible. The designer of the game has offered to send all scans and coding and structuring of his game to whoever will be in charge of rebuilding. President Macron has said that the Notre Dame will most definitely be rebuilt, better than ever, and he hopes to have it done in five years.

On the topic of rebuilding, and on a sadder note, the Vice President of the organization tasked with preserving Notre Dame made his first announcement about the reconstruction last Tuesday. In the announcement he said that there are no longer any trees tall enough to rebuild the roof of Notre Dame as it was (as each beam of the Notre Dame roof was made from an individual tree - and there were over 1,000 beams). He said that when Notre Dame was originally built, the trees they used were upwards of 400 years old, and in the aftermath of the fire, France is quickly realizing that they no longer have trees of that size and age. When rebuilding Notre Dame, the conservation team now plans to rebuild using either multiple smaller beams of wood, or metal beams instead of the original wooden ones. Notre Dame “purists” and those who hoped that the landmark would be rebuilt as it once was are very disappointed with this development, and with no alternative in sight, it seems that they will have to settle with this solution.

Overall, the Notre Dame fire is still a very fresh event and there are multiple new stories breaking every week about new developments and discoveries. What is shown above represents every major development as of April 24, and we will continue to monitor the news surrounding this tragedy and will release an update if any new major developments break.

The two of us are greatly saddened by this event and hope to see the Notre Dame returned to its former glory.

By Alexa Freedman & Owen Stone