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from the they-don't-build-them-like-they-used-to dept.
The deputy mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Gregoire, said the cathedral had suffered "colossal damages", and the emergency services were trying to salvage the art and other priceless pieces stored in the cathedral. A cathedral spokesman said the entire wooden interior was burning and likely to be destroyed.
Sounds like the whole thing may go up in flames. There's a reason for modern building codes. A structure made entirely out of wood, is a huge bonfire, waiting to happen. Thankfully, at this time, there are no reported deaths.
[Update: 2019-04-16 @ 0222: The Cathedral is not "made entirely out of wood" as was suggested above. There is a great deal of stone work in its construction which can be readily seen on its Wikipedia page. I was at work when I heard news of the fire, immediately took a break, loaded the story queue on my phone, saw a story submission on the fire, and pushed it out to the community. In my haste to get the story out, I failed to notice the erroneous claim about wood construction. I apologize for the error. --martyb]
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/notre-dame-cathedral-fire-today-2019-04-15/
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday April 15 2019, @09:10PM (10 children)
The fire started at 6pm, at 8pm Macron should have gone on live TV (on all channels, no small thing) to outline answers to the yellow vest movement.
So, it might be a coincidence, but, I would look closely at the Macron decisions, especially if he starts wearing a crown and demanding to be called his majesty.
Friendly reminder that the same laws affecting workers dignity, that had the French revolt for weeks, were later passed in Italy without a single mewmew because one never heard of before bureaucrat, who was involved in drafting them, was murdered by terrorists becoming a hero.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Funny) by EJ on Monday April 15 2019, @09:22PM
Most of the firefighters and emergency workers I could see in the video were all wearing yellow vests. Coincidence?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 16 2019, @12:15AM
> if he starts wearing a crown and demanding to be called his majesty
To become Emperor, he needed Notre Dame.
To become king, he would need to travel to Chartres.
Neither are very likely, given the French have spent almost 6 months mumbling about the Goog-Ol' days of guillotines.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @01:42AM (5 children)
So fire starts at ~6 pm, Trump posts solution at ~5:39 pm paris time (please double check that timestamp):
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1117844987293487104 [twitter.com]
It looks like he was on the ball, if they had followed his advice the fire would have been put out much earlier. I am sure he had some unmentioned angle like "I offered to let them use the flying water tankers from our nearby US base, but the French were too proud and preferred to let it burn."
(Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Tuesday April 16 2019, @01:56AM (4 children)
I load up that tweet, and I see that it says "10:39am". I'm in Eastern time. Paris is GMT +2. It's 9:53pm where I am now, and paris has 3:53 AM, according to Google. That puts Paris 6 hours ahead of me. Then, if Twitter is correcting for time zone, this tweet was posted at 4:39pm Paris time.
Huh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @02:04AM (3 children)
I'm in a different timezone but also see 10:39. So then twitter is leaking Trump's current time zone when he tweets?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @02:07AM (2 children)
Same AC. Just earlier he said:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1117829011860787200 [twitter.com]
So he was central timezone when he made the tweet? I dunno, that seems like a security issue to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @02:11AM
If you reported this to the secret service, would you get arrested for hacking? Or hired as Trump's IT guy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @02:27AM
Are in UTC. It may be annoying to convert backward/forward, but it helps avoid location leakages or misstatements about posting time when it is from a fixed known timezone with no risk of DST or geographic shits to affect it.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday April 16 2019, @08:41AM
The time that the fire started may be relevant, 6 pm in my opinion is after working hours. Could be that people were still working on the roof, but workers usually quit before 5 pm.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday April 17 2019, @09:38AM
The fire did not start at 6pm. At 18:20h (during mass) a couple of heat sensors in the roof structure went off. Immediately a specially trained squad of 20 firemen went up to inspect, but did not find a visible source of fire -- the roof of Notre Dame is supported by an intricate woodwork structure. They started to do a detailed inspection, but there was not enough time left: about 20 minutes later the fire suddenly engulfed the central spire.
A smoldering fire that suddenly bursts out into flames over a large area is not unusual: I remember a US case study of a fire crew that went into a house with a smell of smoke being engulfed within seconds in fire -- there it was a shortcircuit in a false ceiling, a large window suddenly breaking to the intense heat, and the accompanying draft that wrecked havoc: one fireman's helmet visor was baked into his face.
Current working hypothesis is a short-circuit in the electrical cabling necessary for the restoration project that was going on.
Report and discussion (in French) here. [france.tv]