Workers rely on medieval era tech to reconstruct the Notre Dame
popsci.com
popsci.com
As far as we know, the fire was an accident (not foul play) -- but an extremely preventable one. There were works in progress on the roof of the cathedral, so people were coming and going, some of them possibly smoking, electrical devices were being used, etc.
And to monitor all this activity, there was only one guy, who had started on the job a couple of weeks earlier, who had received little to no training, and who didn't even know where the alarm was.
The point was to "save on costs", that is, in order to save maybe 1,300 euros / month over three months, the people in charge caused 1 billion euros of damage and lost irreparable historical artefacts.
There is a whole administrative department in France, whose sole responsibility is to make sure this kind of catastrophe never happens. At the very least, people should have been fired, from the site manager to the culture minister. Yet nobody's being investigated, let alone prosecuted or punished. Incredible.
I lived in Paris for a time, I would say it is guaranteed some were smoking.
“As far as we know”
In the same sense of like “innocent until proven guilty”
But is that the right lens to be looking through here?
What is the rate of accidental church fires, let alone at somewhere that is such a treasured location as this?
Then factor in, wasn’t there an ongoing spate of what were clearly church arson attacks going on at the time?
Then factor in what you were describing of what seems to be an inexplicably lackadaisical approach of getting to the bottom of what occurred, giving the impression of some wanting above all else to divert attention from what one would think to be the most pertinent questions about what occurred.
Then do the calculus of, okay, if it could be shown to be a clear cut case of being accidental why wouldn’t people in a position to do so, show that? That would have minimal, if any, political ramifications. Whereas the political ramifications of other possible causes of the fire would be much higher.
It raises some questions doesn’t it?
Why aren’t people in positions of influence on this matter and in political leadership doing what their office calls on them to do?
And given what can be observed of their actions what is one to make of their intentions?
Why aren’t they safe guarding and defending the nation’s culture and heritage? Why are they leaving it open and vulnerable to attack?
And yes there was some sort of maintenance/construction going on, and if that played a role in the fire one would think at some point in the intervening years between then and now someone would have shown how it played a role.
Workers were smoking in a space where it was explicitly not permitted, and renovation work meant there was electrical supply where "normally, no electrical is allowed in the roof space because of the extreme fire risk".
Pinpointing the exact source of ignition is a bit challenging given the fire and collapse, I suspect, but without any evidence pointing towards arson it seems like a pretty reasonable conclusion.
“Maybe it was an electrical thing or something” is far from conclusive evidence, and as OP was saying, completely incredible as a response to an event of this magnitude that attracted worldwide attention.
>pinpointing
I’m always surprised when I hear what fire forensics can figure out given the state of the evidence being worked with.
>any evidence pointing toward arson
The whole point of my original post was that all the circumstantial evidence points toward arson.
What evidence are you talking about?
Duh.
You clearly don't know how fire works and just how quickly it spreads. You also vastly underestimate how flammable the roof material was.
>all the circumstantial evidence points toward arson
Pray tell them, instead of slinging vague provocations. Better yet, if you have such clear evidence, I'm sure you're gonna go to the police or the papers with it, right?
https://apps.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v2i7-508...
1,300/year in the US, 25% of which are arson. Clearly it's not a unique occurrence.
I’m surprised at the 25% arson rate, that is considerably higher than I would have guessed, and when combined with the strange response as OP was pointing out, and the fact that there’s not a large subset of “No cause determined,” it would seem to tip the scale pretty strongly to arson being the most probable cause in this case.
If another earthly mortal connected to a church has done something you take issue with, take it up with that person, don’t damage or destroy a community’s property, heritage, and connection to the transcendent.
people here srsly advocating/justifying criminal, potentially homicidal activity, smh
>who tf Unauthorized setting of fire to a structure is illegal, if someone is in or around the structure, it could kill the person.
“”” _People angry at churches _with good reason _get the torch “””
That reads at the very least as justifying, if not advocating. It’s certainly not saying we should strive to handle our issues in healthy and productive ways.
>1. How is
The concept of God at the baseline level is equivalent and synonymous with existence. People over time in various cultures and traditions have agglomerated various flavours onto the concept of God , but at the baseline level, God = existence.
The essence of what God is, is that the concept comes from the desire or impulse to understand or make sense of “the world” / existence.
You are a part of existence. And maybe not just “a part,” as you’ll see if you try to find the demarcation points that definitively separate you from the other parts.
You are the way in which awareness is aware of awareness. “You” are the existence that gives rise to the feeling and observation of existence.
God = existence If you hate God, you hate existence. If you hate existence, you hate yourself.
Better to love than hate, or perhaps even better to understand dichotomies.
Interesting, name three.
"This doesn't appear to be a terrorist attack" is a normal thing to say in a city and country where terrorist attacks are somewhat common.
It can have been an accident, or not. If not, well there were a lot of arsons happening at the same , maybe, so it most likely was arson. Not calling it arson is clearly political. And that means it was arson, because people in power and the establishment cannot be trustesd. It also means the arson was caused by politians, and those people in power not protecting us. Because they fail to do their job
You are aware that the moment the fire actually was an accident, the other 90% of your comment are pretty close to a conspiracy theory?
How would that even look like? The conclusion that it is most likely an accidental fire was not reached by finding something in particular, but by not finding evidence indicating a criminal motive.
> It raises some questions doesn’t it?
You are are certainly raising a lot of questions. If you think something why don't you spell it out?
> Why aren’t they safe guarding and defending the nation’s culture and heritage? Why are they leaving it open and vulnerable to attack?
Why are you talking about an attack? Who attacked the church in your opinion and how?
What in particular would you like to be done by whom?
The reason the media and government were imposing the accident narrative while the cathedral was still burning is because this could have triggered the civil war.
This is also why the report on Bataclan massacre was not released to the general public, or why MLP was prosecuted for advocating terrorism (ffs) when she published pictures of terrorism acts condemning them on Twitter. The sheeps must sleep.
The censorship is also strong here: if I recall correctly I got a HN account banned here by the censor-in-chief for voicing my opinion on the matter at the time (which as a French I think is more informed than the random poster here).
I don’t see how that is scapegoating.
CV headline: "Oversaw safety at a national landmark -- Allowed only a single billion-dollar fire"
Interesting that the responsibility stops there. What about the person that hired the obviously incompetent babysitter? They don’t appear to have sufficient judgement to be responsible for kids.
Is this a true statement? I remember reading an extremely detailed play-by-play in one of the major papers a couple years ago that did a pretty good analysis of why a confluence of factors led to the fire. I don't know what the status is of any governmental, official investigation, but I at least saw some thorough investigative reporting from news organizations.
I agree with the sibling comment that this feels a little like scapegoating. Like many disasters like this, it wasn't just one thing, but a confluence of lots of little innocuous things (e.g. new guy on the job, can't remember all the details but maybe there was a phone number change IIRC, etc.) that led to the fire. Not saying a thorough investigation isn't warranted, but pretending these types of things are completely preventable is also a mistake IMO.
Edit: This is from a US government website, and I can't see all the details but it looks like someone did do a root cause analysis, https://www.govevents.com/details/37273/risk-management-case... :
In the days following the fire, questions began to arise about what could have caused the fire and, also about the nature and extent of the fire detection and protection systems. It turns out Notre Dame had one of the most sophisticated and elaborate fire safety systems ever designed, befitting a landmark of its stature. A team of experts had spent more than six years and untold funds developing the fire protection plan. Yet, when the system was put to a real test, it failed in spectacular fashion. How this could have happened, and what lessons can be learned from this tragic event with be discussed in detail.> Is this a true statement?
Yes, I think it is, unless one can point to an inquiry, not about the fire itself, and how it started (which has been done), but about the chain of responsibilities of the people in charge of the construction site at the time of the fire.
My point is, having just one guy with no training and no experience, monitor a landmark of this importance, during major works on the roof, is incredibly careless and unprofessional and should have consequences. But apparently it doesn't.
Just like we are rebuilding with original stones and techniques, one should perhaps argue that it should also be rebuilt with its original fire resilience too - ie. Low.
At this point, a fire once every hundred years or so is part of the culture, and to stop doing that is in a way destroying the character of the cathedral.
The Christian view of fire is, of course, multi-faceted, as the Holy Spirit is a force for renewal, rebirth and purification. No parishioner wants their home burned down, of course, but at the end of the day, those are simply buildings, and they're replaceable, and every demolition is an opportunity to remake something new and wonderful.
Restoring a major historical building is always a one-off project. You follow the best practices, and the chance of a catastrophic outcome may be 10%, 1%, or 0.1%. You can't tell those scenarios apart in advance, because they all look very similar. Success is overwhelmingly likely. If a catastrophe occurs, the reason is often obvious in retrospect, and you will take that into account in the next project. But it clearly wasn't obvious in advance.
How would you know what and what not is going on in the background?
The real hand work is on artistic stonework. That really is being done by hand. Omni CNC's proposals to make replacement parts with their stone-cutting computer controlled milling machines were turned down.[2]
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/travel/notre-dame-restoratio...
[2] https://www.omni-cnc.com/how-cnc-stone-cutting-machine-help-...
Being able to hire craftspeople who can do things “the old way” is apparently very important when dealing with (the bureaucracy around) old buildings. A lot of these buildings were built, rebuilt and expanded over centuries so they have different construction techniques between different areas which also needs specialized knowledge.
Then I see linked in that article that Notre Dame was a very early example of using iron staples! I can only think that they were used away from water, unlike Bath, where the repairs were on the window fixings.
This is often a contributing factor in the failure of modern steel-reinforced concrete structures.
Another example (and less debatable in its authenticity) Why the US Navy Manages Its Own Private Forest - https://www.military.com/history/why-us-navy-manages-its-own... /// https://ussconstitutionmuseum.org/2015/05/11/the-wooden-wall... (and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28793461 )
Is there any indication that they're improving the structure so it will be more fire proof? Or are they simply restoring it to the configuration that already failed?
And after all the Notre Dame is also a very historically significant building
The people in charge are so concerned about historical accuracy they need to cut down a thousand large oaks, but their predecessors weren't so concerned about historical accuracy when they retrofitted a medieval structure with the electrical wiring that ended up causing it to burn down.
780 years is not that bad for a building. (or, more precisely, the roof frame)
Macron & co had some idea for new things. They were all horrible. While I do think with good taste one could do some new things nicely ( e.g maybe a titanium-based roof instead of the lead one ), a restoration is the next best choice when proposed new things are crazy ugly/out-of-touch.
Btw, in our age, and since at least the early middle-age in France and old Europe, the use of old, large trees is the main political reason to keep alive some old, large forest with old trees. For ordinary wood they do plantations of fast-growing stuff and cut at maybe 40y or so.
I'm not proposing ugly or out of touch changes. Materials changes like titanium instead of lead are exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. Not all of the oak will be in publicly viewable areas.
I'm surprised and disappointed you don't keep forests around simply to benefit nature and humanity without needing a pretext of building construction.
At least 1k oaks were harvested from forests everywhere in France. [3] The majority of them were given for free to help in the rebuilding, and trees of this age/dimensions/quality are definitely not cheap. Both the cutting and moving of such trees -- between 6 and 13 meters, up to 15 tons! -- requires careful planning and flawless execution as they need to be taken out of the forests and preserved during their journey to the sawmill [4] in the North of France. (Here is also an interview of the sawmill operators [5].)
Crazy and fascinating project involving several rare craftsmanships.
(Everything is written in French below.)
[1] https://www.onf.fr/onf/+/bcf::constance-fulda-larbre-dans-la... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv38f3m3f2k [3] https://actu.fr/ile-de-france/ferrieres-en-brie_77181/notre-... [4] https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1876802/france-notre-da... [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQtxUsU9T2Y&t=63s
It's probably not even remotely economic or "productive", but sometimes that's OK.
So, while some of the specifics are probably having to be identified and re-implemented, the basics are broadly understood. Stonemasons as a mass-employer has gone away, but like blacksmithing there are still individuals out there who carry on the tradition.
The vast majority of human activity isn't productive. And that's awesome. We've got so much wealth that we can afford to use it on things that are merely pretty or interesting, like video games and space telescopes and flowers.
It would be nice if we could use more of it to ensure that people have the basics, but that's rarely about lack of money. It's nearly always due to some more systemic problem that can't be fought just by throwing money at it.
It likely has economic impact vastly larger than any Starbucks via tourism.
A week-long golf tournament in my town brings in 200k+ people and local government touts a $190M economic impact number for that. I'm sure it's fudged to be as high as possible, but pretending Notre Dame doesn't have an economic benefit to Paris would be odd.
That seems entirely up to you.
We can do both. Man does not live by bread alone. Utilitarian mediocrity is satisfied with a full stomach and keeping warm.
Of course it was a draw to Paris in general. It's hard to measure its impact, since the cathedral fire coincides with COVID, but Paris tourism has nearly reached pre-pandemic levels and remains the most-visited city in the world.
I don't honestly believe it would be a net economic benefit to put a Starbucks there. But more to the point, the whole thing is there just because people like to look at it. That's all the "productivity" it needs.
Yes, it is the lack of action. People are selfish. End of story. We have the tech and knowledge to fix it all, but burning a ton of kerosene to travel to the other side of the world for 2 a weeks vacation is more desirable.
I could maybe understand artistically if the end result looks different. But ethically? It's a building, ethics don't apply to it.
Now, does using a powersaw instead of a handsaw produce qualitatively worse results? I have no idea. I know nothing about woodworking. And I’ve certainly never worked on restoring or rebuilding any kind of monument. Let alone a centuries old one.
Perhaps they consider it to be important to set what they see as the proper mindset? Perhaps it’s just for show? Or to tell them themselves they did it the best they could? Perhaps there is an objective technical justification?
How could I know? The closest I’ve ever come to cutting wood was using some hydraulic wedge thing at the back of a tractor.
So I’m not arguing and will not be arguing about the specifics of their choices in tools and techniques. That’d be vain and pointless, and I could not argue in good faith.
Which is fine, because the technique is not my point.
My point sole is that, despite it being a building, there can still be an ethical imperative.
That’s all.
Example: when removing waste with a chisel for joinery, going cross-grain allows popping large chunks with ease, rather than route them to dust. And it's a lot of fun!
Power tools do have a use for repeatability and mass-production, which may be useful in the Notre Dame build, but I find the carpenters' approach more honorable.
Mortise and tenon joints are fast and easy (read: cheap and quick) to make with a chisel and hammer. You can bet carpenters of old would be using nails and screws to build all kinds of things, if they were as cheap and abundant as they are now.
Chopping is a pain in the ass, and people have been doing their best to avoid it for centuries. Hell, we're still inventing new ways to cut mortises: see the Festool Domino, which is recent enough to still be protected by patents.
https://notesfrompoland.com/2022/09/21/bellotto-the-18th-cen...
Which was a Televangelical showpiece until it was purchased and renovated by the Roman Catholic diocese. Everything old is new again!