The problem is with the spire. It was added on in the 19th century and creates a chimney in the center of the structure. If it catches fire it becomes a heat engine and draws air up through the interior roof which is literally a forest of trees.
Bit of a difference between
Al-Aqsa mosque catches fire as Notre-Dame cathedral burns
And The Entire Fucking Cathedral Burning Down. See, e.g., this nighttime drone picture from the fire. https://media.apnarm.net.au/media/images/2019/04/16/imagev105bb41f585874e05321978743ea1d671-8dwwb7xusdde2wy15s2_ct460x258.jpg
When the Dome of the Rock, which is how many people here probably first think of that particular mosque, suffers that kind of damage, I will lower my head in along with you in remorse. Edit: Remorse is probably wrong. I didn’t start the fire, after all. Call it sadness and grief instead.
Until then, take your rolled eyes, and attempt to shame posters with some sense of inadequate cultural sensitivity, and take it to another thread.
And how do you know how great a load of water is safe to drop? What you’ve got there is a centuries-old stone building that has probably never been modeled (much less tested) for withstanding that kind of massive impact, currently undergoing unprecedented structural strains due to a catastrophic fire. All you’ve got for estimating an appropriate load is guesswork.
And if you guess wrong and drop too much water, congratulations, you’ve just collapsed Notre Dame. Why on earth would you think that your idea is a more sensible way to approach the problem than “let’s fight the fire as best we can without knocking the building flat”?
“Sure, stone buildings are plenty strong!” is not a calculation either. In the case of a medieval building whose original structure and construction aren’t fully known even now, and which is being weakened every minute by a devastating fire in ways that you don’t have the luxury of observing and modeling in detail, why should anyone naively assume that “calculations” are guaranteed to provide a reliable answer?
I think you have no idea what would actually be involved in the calculations of how much water it’s safe to dump on a burning Notre Dame from a plane without knocking the whole building down, nor how imperfectly known the data are that would be required to even attempt such calculations.
:rolleyes: No matter how many videos you drag in of planes dumping masses of water on pieces of ground that cannot collapse, covered with burning trucks or trees that are past saving anyway, they will not add up to an argument in favor of planes dumping masses of water on a burning medieval building whose capacity to stand up to masses of water dumped on it is very poorly understood, and which it is really quite important not to cause to collapse.
Because you can calculate mass times velocity. At some point in altitude the water is coming down like rain as it disperses.
But if you’re worried about the load on the walls consider that the flying buttresses are designed to counter the weight above that is pushing the walls out. All of the roof and part of ceiling is now on the floor yet the counter force of the buttresses are still in place.
Right. Because that’s the main concern.
This is more than just an “old building”. Jesus fucking Christ.
I took a look at a RWNJ message board that I follow (but do not post on) from time to time. They’re all convinced that the fire was caused by Muslim terrorists. A few have gone a little farther, and stated that the fire was caused (by Muslim terrorists, naturally) in order to destroy a Christian landmark, so Muslims could build a mosque on the site.
Combine this with (in the same thread I looked at) “This is what open borders gets you,” and “President Trump is right; the French have no clue how to fight this, water bombers are needed,” and of course, “This won’t happen in America, as long as we can keep the Muslims out.”
Nobody knows, at this point what caused the fire, but some Americans are absolutely convinced, without any evidence, that it’s Muslim terrorism, and the French are too stupid to figure out how to put out a fire. :smack:
Interesting. Thanks
IF Notre Dame de Paris were a smoldering truck in the middle of a highway, I would agree. That method would have worked.
A wall of water of that mass and force could have caused serious damage to the stone walls. Multiple professional engineering types have been saying such on TV for hours.
On pretty much every network. The fact it appears you don’t understand this makes me sad for you.
No, the North Rose Window is themuch bigger one. That’s one of the roof roses.
Fortunately, buildings aren’t that flammable in this part of the world. Very little wooden construction, you see.
The roofs and pretty much every movable item; that includes the majority of the art, the pews, confession booths, chorus, walkways…
And stuff such as fire-suppression systems are being added to old monuments. Sometimes. Slowly. You can’t just stick a few sprinklers up in the ceiling: for starters, the ceiling is really high up. Old, historic buildings don’t magically grow toilets and smoke detectors when those become the norm. Note also that this isn’t the first time a restoration ends up causing irreparable damage: for example, Ken Follett’s cathedrals books were inspired by the Old Cathedral in Vitoria, which is currently inaccesible except as an archeological site due in part to misguided restoration during the 19th century.
That’s often lead. The windows can be rebuilt or new ones put in place (it was done throughout a lot of Europe after the wars of the 20th century): which option is taken isn’t so much a matter of feasability as of deciding what do you want to do, erase the damage as much as possible or have the new windows precisely as a mark of remembrance.
As usual in any disaster, the Daily Mail has the best photos by far. It may be a right-wing tabloid, but they certainly understand visual coverage of a disaster.
Inside the cathedral and first photos this morning.
It looks like a lot of the stone ceiling survived, so the damage to the interior isn’t as bad as it could have been.
The wooden roof, which burned so quickly, covers a stone vault over the interior. The photos show that sections of the stone vault fell, but there is still a lot intact, which protected a lot of the interior. In fact stone vaults were introduced as a fire-safety measure in the original medieval construction.
See
How Catastrophic Is the Notre-Dame Cathedral Fire?
tl;dr It may not be as bad as it looked at first.
Still looks like there’s glass in the North Rose Window…
I think the fact that the cathedral was built between 1163 and 1345 has a lot to do a lack of “fire suppression system”. The technology didn’t exist yet, and certainly wasn’t a building code requirement at the time. Like a lot of old buildings, I suspect it was “grandfathered” when the new requirements were written.
I also expect that modern fire systems will be incorporated into the rebuilding, rather like when London recreated the Globe Theater they installed modern fire suppression tech, from using fire retardant on the thatch itself to a sprinkler system on top of the roof.
Or possibly the South, I can’t tell which side that’s taken from.
Here’s a 3D diagram of the cathedral showing the stone vault.
Possibly both the north and south windows have survived, but reports seem to be conflicting. There are also reports that the great organ is intact, but has possibly suffered water damage.
Here’s a professional video of the last Vespers service in the cathedral before the fire:
Vêpres du 15 avril 2019 à Notre-Dame de Paris
It was recorded yesterday evening, shortly before the fire broke out.
It’s the south side.
Oh, hurray! I’ve always loved pictures of that window, and I’m so glad it survived.
NB: When I was talking about the frames, I meant the stonework separating the sections where glass was set.)
It’s clear some windows were completely destroyed, but the status of the largest Rose Windows is unclear. The West Rose is intact. The other two, based on pictures this morning, are at least partially intact. I expect they have all suffered from soot and cleaning them is going to be a tedious bitch.
Yeah, smoke and water is bad for musical instruments.