Notre Dame spire burns and collapses.

They say it's a construction accident.

Regardless you are looking at about 900 years gone. They say the entire wood frame is on fire. If the stone walls can handle it via the flying butresses we might be able to fix it. If the heat is too much and cracks that stone down it goes.

If there is anything good out of it is we got most all the statues out of there last night by crane. But that's going to burn righteously for the rest of the night and probably into the next day. It's a priceless loss to the Catholics and to the French Nation.

As a side note, it had better be a accident. If this was a act of war or terrorist Im pretty certain the French will be enraged enough to want to nuke someone.

I am following this on several televison and satellite channels. A sad day for us all. All that varnished wood. Whoo it's going to be super hot. (NOT a good thing..)

 

Virtually the entire frame of the Church is hardwood forest harvested from approximately 50 hectacres of forest around the 1200 AD years. You literally are having a forest fire that will take some burn. French fire fighters have resorted to cannon water onto the towers to cool down if at all possible in case the frame inside the stone is burning. They expect the place to burn completely down in time. But they already apparently made the decision to rebuild.

 

God... act of.

 

I read roofers had been working on a section being retrofitted. If they were using any kind of torch on a flat roof material application, that could of been the culprit.

 

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Survived 850+ years, the French Revolution, two world wars... what a shame.

I don't think there's a flat roof to be seen, but there is 250 tons of lead in the roof. That smoke is going to be a killer.

 

I am going to make a big assumption that the roof is wood framed with slate or lead plates. Im leaning towards lead. It's evidence that it has some form of a metal roofing. The fire is hot enough to burn through that material from underneath.

I have not seen a fire that hot in quite some time for that long.

I think back to the great Baltimore fire of about 1904, Alexander Brown and Carpenter Building at Baltimore and Calvert Street survived the fires outright. It's still there to this day. The stone footings around the building that is yea high show cracking from 2500 to 3000 degree F heat from the flames in the firestorm that almost certainly cremated anything flammable including humans.

I established the street view showing the cracked stone from that fire.

Google Maps

 

it's all dried wood....

here in New England, many factories go up quick, due to all the oils and other chemicals that seeped into the wood over the centuries.

of course too, many old factories make for some great apartments/condos.....cuz no way, no how are the developers gonna buy wooden beams as thick now, as they were back then, for pennies on the dollar.

 

Our Baltimore row homes are the same way. Hardwoods under everything. Brick shell three floors incl basement (Which is usually poured concrete supporting the old coal bunkers in the back along with holding up the home itself.

If there is a problem on the first or second floor and that wood catches, it would be very doubtful you can get out without burns due to the nature of the place. One of the ways we made do very well without a speck of airconditoning anywhere is because the homes inside were built as heat chimneys. Heat goes straight up the stairways on all three levels and out the top steeples usually over the bathroom. If you were able to drive fans to pull cold air in from attic in basement chute windows and side window of first floor middle room and had two very high capacity sets of fans upstairs exhausting out you would be running about 76 degrees inside when temps hit 95 outside.