Notre Dame, the 800 years old central cathedral of Paris, is on fire.
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Here are two short videos at the beginning of the fire 1 2. The second one shows scaffolding around the 90 meter high spire above the middle of the church.
The fire began at about 19:00 local time (17:00 utc , 1:00 PM blogtime).
Church roof fires are notorious for being uncontrollable. The whole roof is likely to come down into the church and burn whatever flammable it finds inside.
Let's hope that the beautiful windows survive.
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My sincere condolences to France over this huge loss.
(Update 1:30 PM)
This video was shot some 15 minutes after the pictures and videos above. Half of the roof is already burning.
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(end update)
(update 2:00 PM) Video of the spire falling down. (end update)
(update April 16, 5:00 AM)
The fire during the night. Firefighters prevented the fire from extending into the towers.
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Despite the large fire above and the immense load only two smaller parts of the vault came down. The fire extension within the church was limited.
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At least one of the beautiful windows (diameter 12.5 meters) survived.
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The large organ is also said to be intact.
For long years the French state which owns the cathredal and the church which leases it haggled about the costs to renovate the crumbling cathedral. Now donations of hundreds of millions are flowing in. This fire may – end the end – have done something for the church that other powers cold not do.
(end update)
Some joker on Wikipedia changed the "Functional Status" of the church to "On Fire".
(We probably can't blame the neocon Géraud Araud for this but how about Macron?)