Commentary on this and that found here and there on the Internet since 2001
Monday, April 15, 2019
DISASTER
Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is on fire. Preliminary indications suggest that this fire may have been caused by certain renovations going on there. Thus far, one spire has fallen and it looks as though the roof might not make it.
The roof is gone. Firefighters are trying to save artwork from the interior. I can't imagine what it will cost to rebuild, but it will get rebuilt. There actually have been fires before, and it's always been rebuilt. Plus at 30,000 visitors PER DAY, they can't afford not to.
I don't think it will be rebuilt in my lifetime. (Which isn't as much time as it used to be.) The fire of Christianity has been going out in France for decades.
So far it looks like a horrible construction accident. So far. I see dark mutterings in odd corners of the internet about whether an electrician named Mohamed was in the building. I would need evidence for that.
Katherine, I won't rule out an act of terrorism until more is known about how & where the fire started. I do know that I posted links to live coverage of this event in a couple of my Facebook groups, a couple of hours ago, and when one commenter just suggested that it could be terrorism he was vilified. Other group members were calling for him to be removed from the group, etc, etc.
Alice Linsley, whom you might remember from the old Stand Firm days had this to say: "Pray for France. In February, at the St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Houilles, France, a statue of the Virgin Mary was smashed, and the altar cross thrown on the ground, according to La Croix International, a Catholic publication.
Also in February, at Saint-Alain Cathedral in Lavaur, an altar cloth was burned and crosses and statues of saints were smashed.
And in the city of Nimes, near the Spanish border, vandals looted the altar of the church of Notre-Dame des Enfants and smeared a cross with human excrement. Then there was a fire at the historic Saint Sulpice Church in Paris on March 17th and now the Cathedral of Notre Dame is being gutted by fire. The President of France has declared a national emergency."
There was also extensive vandalism at the church of Saint-Denis, in the Paris area, recently.
I wonder if workers would have been up there on the scaffolding at that hour. I've read the fire was first seen at 17:50 GMT, which would be 18:50 Paris time. Presumably the work site would have had stringent rules against cigarettes. An electrical short? I don't think the French authorities will be able to suppress reports about what happened.
4 comments:
The roof is gone. Firefighters are trying to save artwork from the interior. I can't imagine what it will cost to rebuild, but it will get rebuilt. There actually have been fires before, and it's always been rebuilt. Plus at 30,000 visitors PER DAY, they can't afford not to.
I don't think it will be rebuilt in my lifetime. (Which isn't as much time as it used to be.) The fire of Christianity has been going out in France for decades.
So far it looks like a horrible construction accident. So far. I see dark mutterings in odd corners of the internet about whether an electrician named Mohamed was in the building. I would need evidence for that.
Katherine, I won't rule out an act of terrorism until more is known about how & where the fire started. I do know that I posted links to live coverage of this event in a couple of my Facebook groups, a couple of hours ago, and when one commenter just suggested that it could be terrorism he was vilified. Other group members were calling for him to be removed from the group, etc, etc.
Alice Linsley, whom you might remember from the old Stand Firm days had this to say: "Pray for France. In February, at the St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Houilles, France, a statue of the Virgin Mary was smashed, and the altar cross thrown on the ground, according to La Croix International, a Catholic publication.
Also in February, at Saint-Alain Cathedral in Lavaur, an altar cloth was burned and crosses and statues of saints were smashed.
And in the city of Nimes, near the Spanish border, vandals looted the altar of the church of Notre-Dame des Enfants and smeared a cross with human excrement. Then there was a fire at the historic Saint Sulpice Church in Paris on March 17th and now the Cathedral of Notre Dame is being gutted by fire. The President of France has declared a national emergency."
There was also extensive vandalism at the church of Saint-Denis, in the Paris area, recently.
I wonder if workers would have been up there on the scaffolding at that hour. I've read the fire was first seen at 17:50 GMT, which would be 18:50 Paris time. Presumably the work site would have had stringent rules against cigarettes. An electrical short? I don't think the French authorities will be able to suppress reports about what happened.
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