Header image
Wandrille de Préville, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I read an article on the internet about the Parisian fire-fighters and their efforts, back in 2019, to save Notre Dame cathedral. https://strangesounds.org/2019/07/notre-dame-fire-collapse-save-paris.html

(I found it through this blog https://almatcboykin.wordpress.com/ which I have linked to in the past.)

I had not paid full attention to what was damaged and what was not. Essentially the central part of the cathedral, including the spire, was gutted, but the two ends were less damaged. In particular the two towers at the entrance to the cathedral were damaged but did not fall. Thereby hangs a tale.

It took about forty minutes for the firefighters to figure out where the fire had started and where it was burning. The blog post goes into detail on how that happened, and it is incredibly sad to read. The fire was detected almost immediately, but its location was not understood until far too late. That meant that the center portion of the cathedral was never going to be saved. The article discusses how firefighters climbed up close to the ceiling, dragging their hoses, and were driven back by the raging flames they found.

As the fire continued to burn, the fire captains realized that if the north tower burned, the bells in the tower would fall. Several tons of metal falling through that stone structure would destabilize and then destroy the whole end of the building. They began heroic efforts to put out the fires in both the north and south towers. They decided that they need firefighters to actually go up in the north tower to get water to the important parts of the south tower. The blog post referenced above has incredible drawings and diagrams on the various maneuvers the firefighters carried out. One company refused to go up in the north tower, fearing that they would never come out. Another set went, freely choosing to accept the danger. Fortunately, after some incredibly hard work both towers were saved.

The whole post is worth checking out just for the diagrams of hoses dangling out the windows, and being carried right into the inferno by those intrepid men and women. I saw a clip of the ceremonies this weekend, December 8, where important people were marching into the nave, and the firefighters were being brought in rank on rank. It was impressive and moving — even more so, when I had read about what they were willing to do to save the building.

Rabbit Hole: For a quick connection to Dante, Philip the Fair, King of France met with his ministers and other people in Notre Dame Cathedral in 1302, where he decided to attack the pope. (That’s not how he put it.) Dante wrote about the attack in Canto 20, Purgatorio. Hugh Capet is mourning what his progeny will do in the future.

That less may seem the future ill and past,
I see the flower—de—luce Alagna enter,
And Christ in his own Vicar captive made.

(Longfellow)

(Paraphrase: I see the fleur-de-lis, the symbol of France, enter the town of Alagna, where Pope Boniface had taken refuge from the French soldiers. His refuge fails and the soldiers make the Pope, Christ’s own vicar, captive.)