Unbearable
Cannot watch Notre Dame burn. Just cannot deal.
We heard about the news from my mother-in-law before it hit the top of the BBC (I think it might have been a smaller item down the page) — process that for a moment. Drudge had it front and center, though.
Take my advice: don’t go to Twitter tonight. I’m coming to the conclusion that the only purpose of Twitter is to make me psychotically angry.
Beautiful gargoyle picture above from Peter Adams Photography. I would say “courtesy of” but I don’t think it counts as a courtesy if you didn’t ask.
Posted: April 15th, 2019 under art, personal.
Comments: 10
Comments
Comment from Ric Fan
Time: April 15, 2019, 10:30 pm
Prediction: They will rebuild as some multi-faith horror.
Comment from Durnedyankee
Time: April 16, 2019, 12:15 am
Is Twitter having a problem with the US President and the fire at Notre Dame?
They were earlier.
Don’t you get unhinged Sweasy – most of them are already doing enough of it for the rest of the world.
Comment from Weaseltablet3
Time: April 16, 2019, 12:43 am
No,Durned, it’s the Muzzies celebrating and the SJWs cheering the demise of European white supremacy. *shakes fist*
Comment from Drew458
Time: April 16, 2019, 1:17 am
My heart is breaking at this news. It’s a horrible thing, and the French could barely contain the blaze which is still going on at 4am Paris time.
And when it turns out that there were just about no fire repression systems in place, either in the cathedral or with the restoration crew (who were using molten lead over thousand year old wood??) … then what? Or the Paris FD, who couldn’t even pump water from the Seine, hardly 90 yards away? And didn’t have the engines to even spray water up that high?
For now, I’ll accept that this was an accident. But there may be a level of tight-fisted lazy ineptitude here that defies belief. Shame on France.
And I’d love to see a list of the people who were working up there, just in case this could have been the 2nd greatest act of jihad ever.
Comment from Jeff Gauch
Time: April 16, 2019, 3:15 am
Drew, you can’t spray water up that high. At least not while doing any good. Spray water up that high and it breaks up into a fine mist. When 12″ ancient (read: very, very dry) timbers get going they produce more than enough heat and draft to render that mist useless. You could do something by dropping the water from above, but water’s very heavy and dropping it onto the cathedral would be a bad idea.
You either have to put out a fire quickly or simply manage it and keep it from spreading to other structures until it burns itself out. This fire was not put out quickly.
Comment from Acme Reconstructors
Time: April 16, 2019, 12:03 pm
Stop with all the doom mongering. What burned was the trusses and other roof supports. Except for one area where the spire collapsed the inner stone arched ceiling vault kept the timbers from falling into the interior. Aside from smoke and water damage, the interior is intact, it wasn’t hot enough to melt candles at the altar or burn the pulpit and seating. Read this.
Drew/Jeff: Because the water is pumped, fire engines and the like can push water up to 100 feet but rarely go past 40. Regardless, as you can see from photos and videos, the French firefighters also had elevating platforms from which to hose the fire, and they did pump from the Seine.
Comment from DurnedYankee
Time: April 16, 2019, 3:10 pm
They’ll have to be cautious about using any of the upper level stone that was exposed to the fire.
Limestone changes composition when exposed to sufficient heat and isn’t structurally sound. That much I know.
Whatever, I’m sure they’ll restore it. Operative phrase I pray is ‘restore ir’, not improve or get artistically creative.
I am loath to criticize for all the joking about the French that Americans (and Brits) like to do. They’re not a bunch of millennial volunteer soyboy firemen, and it’s not like they didn’t give a damn about Notre Dame (pun, bad!).
Finger-pointing and armchair firefighting – not at all useful.
Comment from DurnedYankee
Time: April 16, 2019, 3:19 pm
On an interesting note regarding a sprinkler system –
there was/is a reservoir of water up in the bell tower area, specifically intended for fire fighting. But (n) gallons of water will only douse so much fire nor do I know if it was only using the hydraulic head or if it had supplementary pumps to deliver it, or in fact how it would be delivered to specific points.
Still, the wayback tyme designers did think about fire.
Comment from BJM
Time: April 16, 2019, 7:17 pm
Here’s a link to James Lilek’s twitter page wherein a US firefighter, Gregg Favre, answered fire-fighting related questions.
It’s very helpful, and he holds the Parisian fire service in high regard. So it appears that all that could be done by modern firefighting techniques was done. They were literally fighting a forest fire in the enormous timbers of the attic space.
Fortunately, from what I’ve read today, the interior stone ceiling vaults held, except where the falling spire penetrated, which saved the interior, organ, fixed artifacts and the rose windows.
Also at Lileks dot com The Bleat…James has a video “A minute’s meditation, cobbled together tonight from the 2016 trip.”
Wouldn’t it be a wonderful affirmation if they could ring Emmanuel on Easter morning?
Comment from DurnedYankee
Time: April 16, 2019, 7:35 pm
I have to admit I chuckled at the claim that President Trumps “plan” to use air dropped water would have ruined the building.
The Plan, part of an extremely detailed Tweet you see, was –
“…Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out…”.
“Perhaps”, not being a French word, is clearly misunderstood.
It means “maybe” or in the olde English “by chance”.
Furthermore a “plan” which consists of a suggested possibility totaling 11 words shouldn’t ever be classified as a plan, whether you like Orangemanbad or not.
Write a comment
Beware: more than one link in a comment is apt to earn you a trip to the spam filter, where you will remain -- cold, frightened and alone -- until I remember to clean the trap. But, hey, without Akismet, we'd be up to our asses in...well, ass porn, mostly.<< carry me back to ol' virginny