The unbelievable truth behind the Notre-Dame fire

Post by **boatbuilder** » Fri Jul 22, 2022 9:56 am

In the early evening of Monday, April 15 2019, as a Mass to celebrate Holy Week was being held at Notre-Dame in Paris, a fire alarm went off in the cathedral’s security control room. It was 6.17pm. The fire security officer, working a double shift on his first day on the job, read the panel and radioed to alert one of the guards. He went to investigate what he understood to be a fire in the attic of the sacristy, and found nothing. An evacuation announcement was brushed off as a false alarm, and worshippers were invited back into the building.

Yet fire had taken hold – not in the sacristy, but in the attic of the nave, an area known as the “forest”, where a lattice of 900-year-old oak beams held up the roof. After a crucial half-hour delay, by which time smoke was being photographed billowing above the cathedral by tourists outside, the seat of the fire was discovered.

Read the full article from The Daily Telegraph on MSN