European Central: The Restoration of Notre Dame
Alexis komenda
On the evening of April 15, 2019, at approximately 6:20 Central European Summer Time, fire alarms rang out at Notre Dame, triggering an evacuation of the cathedral. Panicked Parisians saw white smoke curling from the roof, smoke which quickly turned black as flames leaped up the cathedral’s famous spire. Due to an archaic fire alarm system and human error, the fire brigade was not summoned until 6:51, over half an hour after the fire had begun, though they would be on the scene in less than ten minutes. The firefighting operations consisted of almost 400 firefighters and another 100 government and municipal workers who formed a human chain to move precious objects to safety.
The firefighting operation was conducted with extreme care inside the cathedral to avoid worsening the damage (a far more dangerous endeavor than fighting the fire from the outside), and some methods of firefighting like aerial firefighting were excluded from use entirely because they could have potentially damaged the cathedral beyond the point of repair. Firefighting efforts also had to contend with molten lead dripping from the roof, a hazardous remnant of the cathedral’s medieval construction. All briefly seemed lost when, at 7:51, the cathedral’s central spire collapsed, and the wooden framework inside the north bell tower threatened to give way. Had this occurred, the weight of the eight massive bells plummeting to earth would have brought down the North Tower, and possibly the whole cathedral. But, thanks to the valiant work of firefighters, the fire was under control by 9:45. By the 19th of April, the fire brigade determined that the cathedral was stabilized and no longer at risk of a complete collapse.
The damage, however, was immense. Lead joints on many of the 19th-century stained glass windows melted and pews were destroyed. Many of the paintings were smoke-damaged and had to be taken to the Louvre for restoration. The Fondation du Patrimoine, a French heritage-conservation organization, estimated the damage to be in hundreds of millions of euros. President Macron, however, committed to having the cathedral re-opened in 5 years, a mark that should be approximately met if it reopens on schedule at the end of this year.
The rebuilding process was originally estimated to take anywhere from one to four decades, given the need to source wood and stone from the same regions as the original construction as well as use the same traditional techniques to shape said wood and stone that were used during the original construction and various renovations of the cathedral. These needs had to be balanced against the need to reinforce the structure to prevent a similar disaster in the future. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the idea was floated of a “modernized reconstruction”, replacing the stone, lead, and wood of the old roof with titanium sheets and steel trusses in more extreme versions of the plan, or simply adding these modernizations in areas that were not publicly visible similar to what was done with the Reims cathedral in northeastern France.
However, these various proposals were put to rest on the 16th of July, 2019, when the French Parliament approved a law that required the cathedral be rebuilt as close to its pre-fire state as possible, in recognition of its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This rebuilding received aid from many quarters, some more unusual than others. On the one-year anniversary of the fire, the German government pledged to aid in the restoration of the damaged stained-glass windows, covering the cost of expert tradesmen who specialized in rebuilding and maintaining Germany’s own cathedrals. Three days later, the massive French video game developer, Ubisoft, contributed over 5000 hours of research data and some of the most detailed existing 3d scans and models of the pre-fire cathedral, leftovers of the game-making process for an entry into their popular Assassin's Creed series.
By the end of 2020, the last of the melted scaffolding, the only remnant of the restoration work believed to have started the fire, was removed from the roof, and by 2022, eight workshops of master glassmakers had been selected to fully restore the fire damaged stained glass, with additional work being done by the Cologne Cathedral workshop in Germany. Tragically, on August 18th, 2023, Jean-Louis Georgelin, the retired soldier and statesman who had been appointed to oversee the reconstruction effort, passed away. Despite this tragedy, it appears that Macron’s promise will be close to being met. Notre Dame may not be open in time for the Paris Olympics this summer, but, should the reconstruction continue on schedule, it should be open by the end of December.
Today, you can still see the barely-healing scars of the fire as you walk along the Seine towards the Île de la Cité. The rear of the Cathedral is still covered in scaffolding, and the sights and sounds of construction are omnipresent. Signs in multiple languages explain the delicate restoration process to hordes of curious tourists, with the idea of modern workers cutting wood with a medieval saw mollifying some of the disappointment caused by the cathedral’s inaccessibility. Come winter, its doors will be open once again with a new spire rising proudly from its roof topped by the famous rooster-shaped reliquary which was found damaged but intact amid the fire’s debris.
