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Massive tragedy unfolding... Notre Dame Cathedral on fire

True. But I'm thinking what might be more expedient is to provide a metal allow framework and then use a genuine wood veneer. This is an area that isn't shown to the public, so there's no real need to be 100% original. And the need for better resistance to fire is even more great, considering the vulnerability of solid wood.
There are many ways to make faux beams that are structurally strong and visually appropriate.
 
I am generally all for restoring with original materials and techniques, but since the wooden attic was the major weak point of the cathedral, they might consider using a modern support system.

When they rebuilt the roof of the cathedral of Reims, they used beams made from fiber reinforced concrete composite, which has a similar look, if not color, to wooden beams.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...pente.JPG/1024px-Reimscathedralecharpente.JPG

Copy right: Patrick003377 - Wikipedia, public license.
 
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@Galaxy - that makes perfect sense. It's the attic, not seen by the public, so this would go a long way towards a more resilient structure to keep the roof intact for centuries to come.

Interesting article from the New Yorker: On the Roof of Notre-Dame, Before It Burned

Large photo of aftermath... looks amazing, in that a lot more is intact than you'd think. But the smoke smell... must be overwhelming. I wonder how many years it'll take to get rid of it completely.
 
Wow you're a sad sack.
Okay, the post was already dealt with. I understand that you were feeling attacked for your beliefs, but let's not pile on and call him names, please. That goes for everyone else as well.
I mean the religion itself, not the followers.
It doesn't matter. There's a time and place. If we were having a discussion about the merits of religion, your comments would still be rude and disrespectful, but they'd at least be addressing the topic. Here you came in where people were mourning damage to a priceless monument of historical, cultural, religious, and architectural significance and you reduced it down to your petty grudge against religion that no one asked or cared about.
 
Such love and reverence went into building Notre Dame. All I've seen is pictures of it, and even then I can see what went into that building over the centuries. The rose windows, the windows showing Jesus and the saints, and even the icon statues look incredible.
The way I see it, the people who contributed over the years did so not to glorify the Catholic Church itself, but to show their love for God and to share the beautiful things they made because of that with the world. I grew up in a time when not many churches put truly beautiful holy art in the buildings. I got to see Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York, and it's lovely inside. But it doesn't have the history that Notre Dame does.
 
More developments. There's greater clarity on the events timeline leading up to the catastrophe. Cause is still not known, though. NY Times: Why the Notre Dame Fire Spread.

It's interesting to learn that the Paris fire fighters were trained for just such an emergency and are trained to know the structure well. They know to bring in boats down the Seine to serve as water pumps and to immediate start extracting the most valuable artifacts. The baffling thing is that a fire alarm went off at 6:25pm, but upon investigation nobody noticed any fire. It was a half hour later that another alarm went off and by then there was a blaze.
 
A guess here, but the first alarm was probably a smoke detector. The fire may have been smoldering out of sight and might not have properly been investigated. It is possible that there had been previous false alarms during the reconstruction that resulted in a less then through check of the alarm.
 
A guess here, but the first alarm was probably a smoke detector. The fire may have been smoldering out of sight and might not have properly been investigated. It is possible that there had been previous false alarms during the reconstruction that resulted in a less then through check of the alarm.
That's possible.
 
I am generally all for restoring with original materials and techniques, but since the wooden attic was the major weak point of the cathedral, they might consider using a modern support system.

A good point.

This was all very similar to the loss of Buran--also brought on by what was supposed to be repairs to the roof.

But let us bow our heads--the poor hunchback is now homeless. Not Quasimodo, of course, but his four times great grandson...Paramodo...son of Demimodo, who used to work for AT&T during the break-up. (The Bells, the bells).

He went to the Ecuadorian embassy looking for "Sanctuary, sanctuary" but they had just booted out one long term guest, and didn't want another.
 
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BBC: Notre-Dame fire: Rain threatens France's damaged cathedral
Before repairs can even begin, there is the massive clean-up but also the actions needed to protect the cathedral from further damage due to the interior being exposed. The worst of it is rain. The cathedral's vault, which partly collapsed in the fire, is already partly waterlogged after fire-fighting efforts. Architects fear that heavy rainfall could result in further collapse of the 800-year-old cathedral.

So for the moment, they're erecting a temporary tarpaulin covering. But there are already plans to erect a large, purpose-built "umbrella" on the roof of the landmark, which will have its own peak and protect the structure while reconstruction takes place.
 
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PSG had a Notre Dame shirt....
 
The lesson from the ruins of Notre Dame: don’t rely on billionaires
Weeks go by, then months, and Notre Dame sees nothing from the billionaires. The promises of mid-April seem to have been forgotten by mid-June. “The big donors haven’t paid. Not a cent,” a senior official at the cathedral tells journalists. Far humbler sums are sent in, from far poorer individuals. “Beautiful gestures,” says one charity executive, but hardly les grands prix.
 
I'm a bit sceptical about the new attic construction. The walls were built to deal with the weight of wood. The new attic will weigh far more than the original dry timber. They might end up having to reinforce the struts, columns, arches and walls as well - that'd look awful.
 
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