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Originally posted by PASig:

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Originally posted by chellim1:

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The sad thing is. You can’t really rebuild this.

You can... but not quite the same. Notre Dame's roof beams were made from primal oak, from oak trees that had stood for 500 years before Notre Dame was built. There are no primal oaks left in France. The builders will have to use something else for building materials.

The roof beams will most likely be steel when it is repaired.

There is no way in hell the French are going to use steel to rebuild that roof. No, it will be wood brought in from somewhere else in the world and they will have specialists from all over the world working on it and it will be close to the original when done. It may take them 10 years but it will be rebuilt to its former glory.

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Originally posted by Sean Deitrich:
The Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris caught fire and the world watched it burn. The only word that comes to mind is “tragedy.” A real tragedy.

I never got to see the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Though, I had a chance once when I was nineteen. A girl I was dating from Dothan was going to France on scholarship. She asked me to go with her.

It was a bad idea. I am a small-town American who has never traveled overseas. The idea of leaving U.S. soil makes me break out in hives—I wouldn’t survive the Turkish toilets.

I told her to send me a postcard. I never saw her again.

But I always wanted to go. In fact, there are only a few things I’d like to see in person before I die:

The World Series. The Dixie Belle Riverboat. And the spires of Notre Dame de Paris.

I guess I missed my chance.

Today, my wife and I were riding through the Arizona wilderness after spending a weekend at the Grand Canyon. The local radio station interrupted George Strait to announce that Notre Dame was on fire.

My wife turned up the volume. A reporter with a heavy French accent said:

“Ze greatest relic of our civilization is engulfed in flames.” The announcer’s voice broke with emotion. “It is a tragedy, people, a true tragedy…”

My wife covered her mouth.

We pulled over at a burger joint outside Flagstaff, not far from historic Route 66. And in the all-American diner we watched the corner television broadcast a scene from Hell.

A flaming cathedral roof, falling to pieces. Dante’s Inferno.

“I been there once,” said our waitress, filling my coffee mug. “My family’s Italian Catholic, we saw the cathedral last year and my grandpa was holding my hand all along the tour, crying at the relics.”

“We’ve been there, too,” said another man who was eating lunch with his daughter. “Visited one summer, took my breath away.”

The man’s daughter nodded in agreement and kept working on her French fries.

“I couldn’t believe the rose windows,” our waitress went on. “I probably took a hundred pictures of the windows alone.”

The windows she’s referring to are the famous circular stained glass works, adorning the cathedral’s main portals.

The waitress showed us pictures on her phone. Those at the lunch counter craned necks to get a glimpse. We marveled.

The waitress replaced her cellphone in her pocket and made the Sign of the Cross.

“Just think,” said the waitress, “that building dates back to the days of Saint Francis of Assisi.”

It was sobering. My wife couldn’t eat her hashbrowns because she was watching the devastation. I saw a tear in the corner of her eye.

My wife tells me she once stood in Notre Dame, looking at its rafters, and she felt something deep. Awe, maybe.

“Uh oh,” a man said. “Look.”

It happened. The television showed footage of Notre Dame’s French Gothic spire, falling downward into a blaze. It toppled headfirst.

People in the restaurant let out small gasps. An old man sighed. So did the waitress. So did I.

I suppose we all knew what this meant. It meant the wooden lattice work that predates our surnames is gone. Certainly, it might be rebuilt someday, but it will never be what was lost.

Thus, on a quiet Monday afternoon, somewhere in America, my wife and I ate lunch in the company of fellow mourners.

We were five thousand miles away, in a side-of-the-road eatery, but in our hearts we were standing in the City of Lights across the Atlantic.

We watched, shaking our heads, biting our lips, and a few of us wiped our eyes.

Images of flames. European reporters wearing looks of disbelief. An eight-hundred-and-fifty-year-old holy monument, reduced to ashes.

It was not just a chapel, our waitress explained.

It was a subject of Impressionist paintings. It was a muse for Victor Hugo’s literary masterpiece. It contains what many believe to be the crown of thorns from the Crucifixion.

After our waitress served her last customer, she removed her apron and walked outside. I could see her through the diner window. She sat with hands clasped and head bowed.

I paid at the register. I took a final glance at the disturbing scenes on TV and realized I will never get to see it. At least not the way it was.

In the parking lot, I passed our waitress, seated on a bench. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but I caught a few words.

“Áve María, grátia pléna,
Dóminus técum…”

It was a tragedy. A real tragedy.

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Originally posted by StarTraveler:


As a structural engineer, I agree that it will be rebuilt to its former glory, but have to agree that they'll probably use steel in parts that aren't visible due to problems getting the right wood and adequately duplicating the connections. While one could climb the towers, I don't think they had regular tours up in the roof trusses, so I'd expect that to be steel with a display somewhere along the tour route showing the original configuration.

The final issue is time. Switching to steel will allow them to have a new roof in place in as little as 12 months after the stonework is certified as okay or repaired. Doing it with timber would probably take years longer.

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...Recreating it will be the trickiest part of the restoration, experts said.

France's top producer of oak said he was worried the country did not have enough of the precious timber for the job.

Sylvain Charlois estimated that around 1,300 oak trees had been used in the construction of the original roof.

"To constitute a big enough stock of oak logs of that quality will take several years," he said.

- Tighter deadline needed? -

Francois Jeanneau, one of the 40 architects in charge of state monuments, suggested that Paris draw on the example of Nantes cathedral and build a new "forest" of reinforced concrete.

"The un-initiated can barely tell the difference," he told Le Parisien newspaper...

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Originally posted by lbj:
It is a huge tragedy to lose history, artwork and relics.

However, let us not lose sight of the fact that in the spirit, Notre Dame is a physical building and not THE church.

We Christians ourselves are the church, a building is not.
God doesn't live in buildings anymore, He lives in us.

Not that anyone here has said otherwise, just wanted to throw this in here as a matter of perspective.

---

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Originally posted by flashguy:
Pledges of $790,000 already? Definitely, money will not be an issue for the restoration.

flashguy

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“He [Father Jean-Marc Fournier] showed no fear at all as he made straight for the relics inside the cathedral, and made sure they were saved. He deals with life and death every day, and shows no fear.”

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Tell me how arson can be ruled out before the embers are even cold?

"...........The Paris prosecutors’ office ruled out arson and possible terror-related motives, and said it was treating it as an accident, The Associated Press reported...………"

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Originally posted by arcwelder76:
How about we wait for the facts?

It's easy to speculate.

Just like the RBG thread, let's not just bump this with nonsense and frankly obvious speculation.

Save it for real news. Anything less is jerking peoples chains.

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Originally posted by justjoe:
It's kind of mind-boggling that Muslims in France are joyful that Notre Dame has burned. My Italian grandparents, immigrants to America, were grateful, and considered themselves-- and us, their progeny-- to be lucky to be here.

These immigrants in France, however, are not merely ungrateful, they are hostile and menacing. And the French-- along with the Germans, the Dutch, the Swedes, etc.-- abide them, and cater to them. Even coddle them.

The whole thing is astonishing, really.

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Originally posted by PASig:

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Originally posted by StarTraveler:


As a structural engineer, I agree that it will be rebuilt to its former glory, but have to agree that they'll probably use steel in parts that aren't visible due to problems getting the right wood and adequately duplicating the connections. While one could climb the towers, I don't think they had regular tours up in the roof trusses, so I'd expect that to be steel with a display somewhere along the tour route showing the original configuration.

The final issue is time. Switching to steel will allow them to have a new roof in place in as little as 12 months after the stonework is certified as okay or repaired. Doing it with timber would probably take years longer.

Just saw this, very interesting! Apparently the cathedral in Nantes was rebuilt in 1972 using concrete instead of wood.

quote:

...Recreating it will be the trickiest part of the restoration, experts said.

France's top producer of oak said he was worried the country did not have enough of the precious timber for the job.

Sylvain Charlois estimated that around 1,300 oak trees had been used in the construction of the original roof.

"To constitute a big enough stock of oak logs of that quality will take several years," he said.

- Tighter deadline needed? -

Francois Jeanneau, one of the 40 architects in charge of state monuments, suggested that Paris draw on the example of Nantes cathedral and build a new "forest" of reinforced concrete.

"The un-initiated can barely tell the difference," he told Le Parisien newspaper...

Years? Decades? Uncertainty over time needed to rebuild Notre-Dame

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Originally posted by Doc H.:

Two hundred years, originally. For perspective. Of course, that was the whole cathedral, and modern construction can accelerate it, although likely not duplicate it, but still....