Donations flow in as crews assess damage to Notre Dame Cathedral
PARIS — France rose Tuesday to confront the smoldering remains of Notre Dame Cathedral, as officials announced they had extinguished the inferno that partly destroyed the nation’s symbol. Donations began to pour in, and authorities started to take stock of the damage.
As the first rays of sun drew across the soaring cathedral — whose two rectangular towers stood tall above the nearly-totally destroyed roof and collapsed spire — firetrucks and cranes with flashing blue lights continued to fight remnants of the blaze. By mid-morning, a spokesman for the Paris fire department announced that the flames had been quelled entirely.
From certain angles, it was almost possible to look head-on at the front of church and see its centuries-old rose windows and carved statues and imagine all was intact. But to stray to any other angle made clear the devastation. The roof was burned away, and there was an aching absence where the spire had been. Char and smoke marks licked the walls out of rose-round window frames where once there was stained glass. Wooden roof beams that had seemed eternal now looked like used matchsticks.
The cathedral’s most precious stained-glass rose windows, an ensemble that dates to the 12th and 13th centuries, are also likely intact, said André Finot, a cathedral spokesman.
[link:https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/notre-dame-cathedral-fire-paris-updates/2019/04/16/6f8b40c2-5fc6-11e9-bf24-db4b9fb62aa2_story.html?utm_term=.7dda53b5f4a0|
