The memory of the devastating fire on the evening of April 15, 2019, is still vivid in the minds of the French people, they seem to remember clearly where they were and what they were doing on that April night - when Notre Dame Cathedral was engulfed in a raging fire.
French President Emmanuel Macron was filming a nationally televised speech at the Elysee Palace. He interrupted his speech and ran to the cathedral. "Notre Dame is history, literature, ideals, the most important thing in our lives," he said to the camera. "It will be rebuilt, and we will do it together."
From above, the interior of the church was left in ruins. The spire had fallen through the dome, crushing an altar and leaving a hole in the middle, surrounded by charred wooden panels.
Although severely damaged, fortunately no works of historical art were destroyed.
Difficulties in repair work
President Macron has said that Notre Dame will be repaired and reopened for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, but collecting the debris is not easy. They are legally protected monuments and it will take time for experts to sort through them.
Because the vaults were damaged and at risk of collapse, scientists had to use remote-controlled robots to collect the debris, taking two years to complete the collection and transport them to a warehouse near Charles de Gaulle airport.
Technicians wearing lead dust masks used mortar to hold together fallen stones on the dome. The fire had eaten deep into the thick limestone wall at the top of the roof, peeling away the stone and creating cracks inside.
A worker is fixing the scaffolding with the help of two wooden braces above.
A carpenter is fixing the roof truss of Notre Dame Cathedral.
While Notre Dame was being cleared, the walls and vaults had to be secured from sudden collapse. An engineering study found that without the lead roof and wooden beams that held them together, a wind gust of more than 90 km/h could have toppled the walls.
From 2019 to the summer of 2021, carpenters used wall columns and other materials to build the dome, inserting multi-ton wooden braces and adjusting the scaffolding underneath each one accordingly. Meanwhile, technicians were tasked with dismantling the old steel pipes and scaffolding.
Workers are moving back and forth on the roof using hydraulic lifts.
Unfortunately, the sudden outbreak of the pandemic has caused the repair of the Cathedral to be interrupted for a long time, which is why the restoration work must now be accelerated to be completed in 2024.
Race against time
In the summer of 2020, the President and the French National Heritage Committee approved the restoration plan of Philippe Villeneuve - the architect in charge of the restoration of the Cathedral. Accordingly, Notre Dame will be rebuilt as it was, that is, the final state that architect Viollet-le-Duc restored in the mid-19th century.
The interior of the cathedral, including the chapels, paintings, statues and stained glass windows, will be completely renovated.
The normally quiet St. Ferdinand Chapel has been transformed into a busy restoration workshop as experts restore 19th-century frescoes.
In February 2021, the French Ministry of Health's Scientific Advisory Board recommended banning the use of lead in new roofs of the Cathedral and finding alternatives, because lead dust that spreads in the air every time it rains will adversely affect the health of people in the area.
However, architect Villeneuve affirmed that: "Lead is an important element in construction", only lead can create the spire and sculpt the roof of Notre Dame. He added that the rainwater that accumulates on the roof will be carefully filtered to prevent lead dust from flying into the air.
Villeneuve also decided to rebuild the wooden frame to make the spire look like it did before. When Viollet-le-Duc restored the spire, he replaced the transept with a completely different frame than the medieval one, and Villeneuve would do the same now.
A technician restores a bronze statue of St. Philip at Socra Restoration Company.
The statues of the Twelve Apostles were fortunately removed from the roof of the Cathedral four days before the fire.
Faced with a shortage of oak trees across France, forestry expert Philippe Gourmain, who also manages France's forests, has been racing against time to collect the necessary wood - through donations - since the fire broke out.
Last winter, Gourmain collected a donation of 1,200 oak trees from around the country. The largest, oldest trees, planted before the French Revolution, will serve as the base for the tower.
Although the pandemic has slowed down the restoration of the Cathedral, accompanied by difficulties related to the collection of oak and lead, in just over two years, Notre Dame will return to its original state, bustling with workers, worshippers and tourists from all over the world.
Every day, the French people still watch and wait to see Notre Dame Cathedral completely revived.
In 2024, if all goes according to plan, a drone will hover right above Notre Dame's new spire, allowing the public to admire Viollet-le-Duc's grand architecture reborn.
