hot works

The hunchback did it.

Live camera -

Harry Bloomfield expressed precisely :

Scaffolding looks near collapse..

With apprentices like mine they do not need a blowtorch to set fire to things.....

It's still ongoing with the solicitors etc so I cannot name names but the claim is that the fire alarm he fitted set fire to the WMC.

Yep.

insides of the square stone tower(s) now well alight

Bloke in the pub has just said that Nigel Farage is on his way with a toasting fork and two slices of white Warburtons sliced bread.

If you mean one of the two towers, I think was just smoke rising up through the tower. I thought they might got more appliances there and maybe water bombed it with a 'chopper.

:-)

No, at one time there was flame showing through a large section of one of the tall openings, they've got a hose on it, they don't seem to have shown that camera angle lately, one hell of a clang if it drops the bells ...

Sparks now, from between the twin towers..

A tragedy.

Whenever we visit Paris (it is normally part of or annual Tour de France), we make a point of having a picnic by the Seine overlooking Notre Dame.

on 15/04/2019, Andy Burns supposed :

It looks as if they have it under control now and they are walking round the balconies of the two towers.

ITYWF they are there to try to stop the fire spreading to the bell tower

- something fire chief has just been reported as saying they aren't confident of doing. If that tower comes down then the sky will indeed have fallen in Paris.

Though apparently the bells are in the tower without the flames ...

Priests burning some embarrassing paperwork?

Owain

It is a tragedy. But it seems so many historic buildings catch fire while being renovated. For example in recent years, e.g. Windsor Castle, York Minster, Glasgow School of Art.

My recommendation: go to see the Palace of Westminster before it too burns down, as parliamentarians are determined to start a substantial renovation effort in just a year or two.

It does seem that building contractors can be awfully careless in these old buildings: all it takes is a blowlamp left too long near to something flammable, or a multi-way power adaptor just a bit overloaded. In all these cases it seems that the fire takes hold and spreads quite widely before anyone notices: after all there must have been *lots* of people around in the Notre Dame in early evening. Wouldn't it be feasible, while works are under way, to install dozens or even hundreds of small radio-linked battery-operated smoke detectors all over the structure?

Not just buildings, the Cutty Sark sailing ship caught fire while under renovation which I believe was caused by an overheated vacuum cleaner that had been left running unattended, fortunately much of the interior had been removed to be renovated elsewhere so the damage was less than it could have been,that isn?t practical with large buildings but one thing that used to and may still take place when ships were worked on in shipyards and drydocks was when hot work such as welding,cutting etc takes place you normally have a person present whose job it is to watch out for fire caused by sparks or heat conduction and make sure the area is safe before it is left and that person isn?t the same one as the one(s) doing the work. You would think a similar system would be in place when a particularly old and valuable building is being worked on, perhaps there was but a drastic accident like a drum of white spirit being knocked over a heat source took place.

GH

Not sure that would help very much. It's the massive timber roofs that go up then collapse into the building destroying the contents(*). Those roofs are really just a tinder dry, dust covered, open aerial bonfires just waiting to be lit and once lit just burn, you don't stand a chance of putting it out.

(*) Though looking at the drone image, it looks like the Notra Dam vaulting hadn't collapsed when that was taken so the fire might not have got into the body of the cathedral. Several thousands of gallons of water per minute may well have though. B-(