Could be a spark from a welder, a worker on the roof taking a smoke break, an electrical fault, who knows. There's any number of possible ignition sources and there's a lot of wood in that structure.
Also, high enough temperatures can change the stone. I’m not remotely a material scientist. I vaguely remember stone barbecue pits require some special consideration.
There are also probably concerns about thermal expansions as well. The stone might resettle a little bit differently.
The melting point of marble is 800ºC and if reports are true that it's a construction mistake and not something more drastic it stands a good chance of not collapsing.
You can cause a drinking glass (melting point 1400C) to explode if you expose it to 100C and 0C water in quick succession. Differential heating, moisture vaporizing, and expansion/contraction are larger concerns than the stone becoming lava.
Yes. Keep in mind that a lot of the wood is structural too (i.e. the roof). It's conceivable that this could cause collapse of some to all of the building.
Edit: Note the absolute phrasing of the parent comment and that the spray force in a strong downpour isn't much less than what's done with firefighting planes in situations that call for that level of pressure.
This video doesn't prove your point. Not only are they actually not directly under that, but this is spread over a much larger distance than trying to target the cathedral would be. They configure their release to spread over a larger area than that.
It proves you can effectively firefight with water from a plane without even snapping tree branches, thus there'd be no reason the same pressure couldn't be used on a building.
I think I found out the reason everybody is going so crazy over this - a controversial figure from the wrong tribe apparently mentioned flying water tankers. Thus even neutral debate over the subject is wrongthink and has to be extinguished.
Why don't you step back for a moment and just admit that given the premises
-Firefighting airplanes can effectively spray in a way that doesn't harm trees
-Buildings are fine in extended substantial downpours
That it must follow
-Spraying a building with a plane in such a configuration would not collapse it
Otherwise you are the clueless one. This is absurd. At least you downvoters (who are ignoring the site guidelines) are letting me see some aesthetically pleasing upvote configurations again when it goes back up, so I appreciate it.
The facts stand, as have been reiterated in the thread above:
- Firefighting airplanes can effectively spray in a way that doesn't harm trees (by releasing the 12,000+ gallons over a very large area)
- Buildings are fine in extended substantial downpours (which is significantly less water per second than an air-tanker dump)
To your thought's end:
- Spraying a building with a plane in such a configuration would not collapse it
Yes, it's possible to spray the cathedral with water in such a way that it will not collapse it, but that configuration is that very little water gets on the cathedral, and is instead spread over pretty much the entire island in the Seine.
At this point in time, however, it likely doesn't matter. Since most of the building has collapsed already, due to the fire. Like we said it would.
"The weight of the water and the intensity of the drop at low altitude could indeed weaken the structure of Notre-Dame and result in collateral damage to the buildings in the vicinity."
So, yeah, I'm gonna trust the experts on this one, not random armchair Internet quarterbacking.
I was clearly talking about the subject in general, in response to a blanket statement against water on buildings made by tomswartz07. Of course an ancient building might fare worse. Also noteworthy is that their comment said collapse would be inevitable but all this tweet says is "might weaken the structure."
It's not so much that it's an ancient building, it's that its structure is heavily compromised by the fire. It might fare better against an assault of water than lots of modern buildings. You can imagine one of those big warehouse spaces could fold up like a house of cards under an assault.
The larger point is that by the time you release high enough to not concentrate a huge amount of force from the water on the building, you're just not doing that much, not that much more than a really heavy natural downpour for a few seconds (which wouldn't be nearly enough to put out a fire this large).
And the trees aren't an apt comparison because the trees aren't taking the brunt of the water; the ground is. However, the roof of the structure would be taking the entire brunt of the falling water. Several tens of thousands of pounds times whatever speed its falling at squared equals a lot of kinetic energy.
That's much more volume at once in any one area and much closer to the subject (so less time to dissipate) than any of the actual flying water tanker videos that have been posted.
The rain falls over an extended period of time, not all at once as one glob. Only several drops are hitting you at any given instant in the rain, so you are only subjected to minuscule amounts of force at any given instant.
The difference would be like standing in the shower for 40 minutes, versus being hit my an entire tub full of water going at the same speed all at once.
I remember during the Khan Academy controversy a few years back, an educator commented on reddit about the difficulty in teaching some kids about rates. Some kids just don't get rates. They think of speed as something like "a feeling of intensity." They just don't have an abstract, generalized understanding of "N things per unit time."
Think about that for a moment. Think about all of the potential for miscommunication.
Yes, but the water sprayed from those tankers isn't much more intense than a severe downpour plus wind. The branches aren't snapped off the trees they're sprayed on here and people are standing right inside it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87hfWatbVPY
I'm comparing strong rain to water plane spray. Maybe the output of some would be too severe, but clearly some are suitable.
"it is the largest fire service in Europe and the third largest urban fire service in the world, after the Tokyo Fire Department and New York City Fire Department. Its motto is "Save or Perish" (French "Sauver ou périr")."
I'm sure they have enough capacity.
Also you don't just drop water from planes above cities... this makes no sense.
What do you think is more likely? That there is not a single stream of water hitting it, or there are plenty of fire fighters at the scene you just happen not to have seen any pictures of them?
There were thousands of firefighters on scene at the World Trade Center, yet not a drop of water was ultimately poured on the fires. This may be well beyond their capability to stop.
If the WTC fire hadn't been a government conspiracy it could easily have been stopped if they just had asked a few internet forums or Twitter users, right?
Yeah, nothing like a bunch of boys online with delusions of the grandeur of their own intellect, second-guessing professionals who probably had plans for such an occurrence in place already anyway.
it could be that controlling the burn at this time means not using water. its a fair question if the observation is correct. if your observations dont match your assumptions, question your assumptions.
> I don't see a single stream of water hitting it in any of the live streams.
I saw on the live stream a couple of water jets, from aerial platforms, at the corners (probably as close as they could get with the trucks). But my guess is that most of the firefighting is happening on the ground level (some of it inside the building), out of sight from the distant cameras.
> Also you don't just drop water from planes above cities... this makses no sense.
Superb way to collapse the structure, incinerate/crush the firefighters, and endanger pretty much anyone around the area, all while leaving pretty much nothing to be saved. Say nothing of anyone that might be trapped in there.
It scares me that Trump may perform his daily tasks with the same amount of thought he applied to this recommendation or when he talked about the CA fires. Can't the guy either shut up or at least think for a second before he puts something on Twitter?
Well, the roof just collapsed, so I guess pick your battles. Wait for the fire to collapse it or try to save it with water.
They could also drop fire retardant on it, the foam isn't that heavy.
Hopefully they already evacuated everyone.
The news streams just started showing water being put on it, looks like the smoke is dying down, hopefully they can save it!
The foam that they drop from the tankers isn't as destructive as you make it seem. Living in Southern California my house was been hit by one and while you get coated in a red foam its not going to kill you.
I know this idea is pretty far "out there", but what if you could have an aircraft hover over the structure and spray water, rather than dump it, like a giant shower? The whole idea of using water is that, with its high heat capacity, it absorbs the heat from the fire, as well as reducing its access to oxygen, but dumping it all at once obviously is bad for anything on the ground, but maybe showering it would work? I know, it's probably not feasible.
Yeah, it works just fine on forest fires. Not so much in urban settings.
But now that Trump has said it, a bazillion MAGAbots will be asking why they didn't use a plane, and start looking for a French conspiracy to destroy civilization or something.
I've been watching different feeds and looking at photos and haven't seen any evidence of firefighting of any sort. What are they doing? Just letting it burn?
Maybe we should wait to find out, there may be fireman inside making sure there are no people , evaluating the situation, I assume you need a strategy and not just spray water where you see flames.
They might be more focused in evacuating the place and making sure none of the surrounding building catch fire. Paris is a huge firetrap, you really don't want it to jump. At least it is quite isolated from the rest of the city.
Update: In the news they said that firefighters are entering the building to save as much art as possible before spraying water.
It's not like planes loaded with water are standing by at the municipal fire brigade ready to go at a moment's notice. They would take hours to deploy. You typically see them used in wilderness firefighting, where fires rage for many days if not many weeks.
This is a _really_ hard fire to fight. Their first priority is going to be ensuring everyone is safe, and likely setting up interior and exterior positions where they intend to stop the fire from spreading (the areas that are already involved are a total loss, let them go and focus on saving what can be saved).
They key point is "fire control" You don't want to randomly throw water on a fire, which likely won't impact the fire in itself, but destroy the things not touched by the fire.
For getting a fire down you either have to prevent it from access to oxygen or prevent spreading.
A big fire like that can't be covered completely to be cut of from oxygen.
With fire control you can however try to cool down the areas close to inflammation to prevent further spreading. Save what can be saved, like the lower walls.
Trump gave the same advice. After being involved in projects where we had to put out some fires it annoys the hell out of me when people who never have thought about the problem give some "advice" or say "why don't you just". Even rejecting it costs energy. Sometimes it's better to just shut up when you know nothing.
I bet there are other smartasses in high position in France who also give "advice" or are asking questions and they may be more difficult to ignore. Some managers have the courage to tell these people to f... off but a lot of them don't have the spine to do so so it still may be a problem for the firefighters.
I have gone through this process last summer in my company and it's really frustrating when people spend energy on questioning everything you do instead of helping.
My current job is to basically do this professionally. Some problem arises that I have no familiarity with, and I'm tasked to listen to what the experts are saying and ask questions until a solution presents itself. Then the experts go and implement the solution.
Often times people with no expertise can offer a helpful outside perspective. This is particularly true in cases where an exception to policy or historical process is what is holding things back. Because the ignorant person is not biased by current policies and processes. Now I'm wondering if everyone at work hates me for having this role.
"I'm tasked to listen to what the experts are saying and ask questions until a solution presents itself."
This may be a role if 1) you actually listen very carefully and 2)things are not already on fire. There is a time for this but there are also times when you just have to let the experts do their thing.
One thing that always bugs me that consultants and advisers often show up during crisis and suck up a lot of energy that could be used for solving the problem. But as soon as the crisis is over and there is time to discuss ways to prevent future problems all the execs and consultants suddenly disappear.
Thank you for refusing to actually consider an opinion that is unpopular. I mean if popularity is the basis by which good decisions are made, then all I need is proper control of the media and then to make my opponents seem totally stupid.
The saddest thing will be losing the stained glass windows. Those have been somehow preserved for centuries but are going to get severely damaged here.
I mean the entire cathedral has already been severely damaged. These things are in a state of constant rebuilding - it's took many generations just to get built.
The walls maybe, but the roof is mostly wood, made 800+ years ago, it's gone, the statues, the drapes, the windows, the bells and the clock are gone forever.
For some resolution and completeness, certainly. The rest can be inferred. It won't be perfect, of course, but I'd be surprised if it isn't attempted at some point.
I have significant doubts much will survive at this point. I am not an expert, by any means, but once a large part of the upper building has, it's pretty darn hard to contain. There is a lot of stone, and I presume a lot of that will survive in some form or another, but how much of the actual construction as a whole...
Notre Dame is more than twice as old, and presumably contains cultural artifacts vastly more culturally important. There will be a Notre Dame again, and it will look the same to casual visitors, but it won't be fine.
There's significant history of the building being in disrepair and being restored. Cathedrals are living buildings in constant flux. I sound crass and insensitive, but that's the nature of these cathedrals. Restoration started on Notre Dame before it was ever, "finished". The building has, at times, been completely abandoned.
Am I shocked and saddened for this fire? Yes of course, I lived on the Rue de Roi de Sicile - a few minutes walk. I've drawn it many times.
Do I have hope for the future of the installation? It's France: of course I do.
That wasn't so bad - the damage was concentrated on one of the transepts (the short 'arms' of the cross-shaped floor plan) and took out the roof but not the walls. The damage was repaired in four years at a cost of only a few million pounds. This is much worse.
Also, York Minster (like, I suspect, Notre Dame) has world-class stonemasons and glaziers with expertise in medieval building methods, which certainly helps with the restoration.
Sadly, no, it won't. The area where the fire looks worst was already deteriorating significantly -- if you visited in recent years, you would have seen heavy duty nets and the like to control damaged masonry, for example -- and you have a lot of materials that are either combustible or at the very least susceptible to heat damage of one kind or another.
One of the great architectural wonders is falling apart before our eyes, and it is just very, very sad.
[Edit: Shortly after I wrote this, the spire fell. A spokesman for the cathedral has confirmed that they do not expect any of the timber interior to survive the fire. So, so sad.]
This is my hope and belief as well. Without the fire, much of it was going to have to be replaced/reconstructed at some point in the future anyway. It's an 850 year old building. In order to maintain it, we have to face the Ship of Theseus problem [0] and accept that it is a dynamic building, not a perfectly preserved snapshot of 1345 or whenever you consider it "done being built". The reconstruction of the spire in the 1800s shows that this has already been happening.
Too early to say if it is related but a dozen or more Catholic Churches across France have been desecrated, vandalized, or set on fire since February of this year.
Let’s not peddle flimsy rumors, especially not those accusing certain groups (as made here using the linked article).
There is nothing to be lost in waiting for actual investigative results. And, fwiw, the early images clearly point to the fire breaking out in the roof, where construction scaffolds are clearly visible in all the images.
To be sure, always wait for proof before acting. But pattern recognition is a thing.
Although there was no evidence of a connection, France has seen a number of
attacks on Catholic churches in the past year, including arson and vandalism.
Paris’s Church of St. Suplice was set on fire after midday mass last month. No
one was injured Police are investigating, but firefighters attributed the blaze
to arson.
When anything has a disagreeable explanation there becomes a strong presumption that it happened "all by itself". For example, the huge increase in crime in Sweden in recent years has also happened "all by itself".
"Part of the reason is that Sweden’s gang violence, long contained within low-income suburbs, has begun to spill out. In large cities, hospitals report armed confrontations in emergency rooms, and school administrators say threats and weapons have become commonplace. "[1]
Gang violence just spills like a liquid into different places "all by itself" and that's a reason why crime is rising.
> Although there was no immediate evidence of a connection, France has seen a number of attacks on Catholic churches in the past year, including arson and vandalism.
> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
The old spire was taken down after the Revolution because it was in bad state and in danger of falling over the structure. A new one was built in the big mid-19th restoration of Viollet-le-Duc. Source, the chief architect of the current restoration works in this very interesting video tour (in French): https://www.facebook.com/lemonde.fr/videos/10155299594692590...
Does wood really last that long? I know ancient Japanese wooden temples are basically rebuilt every 30 years or so, a constant renewal akin to the Ship of Theseus. Are European wooden structures similarly renewed?
They do it in Japan because they choose to. Rebuilding it every generation is a religious ritual tied closely to Shintoism. The buildings certainly aren't rotting out completely over that short timeframe!
Many Americans live in wooden houses that are much older than that. The biggest problem tends to be termites.
"The Commission on Historical Monuments approved most of Viollet-le-Duc's plans, but rejected his proposal to remove the choir built under Louis XIV. Viollet-le-Duc himself turned down a proposal to add two new spires atop the towers, arguing that such a monument "would be remarkable but would not be Notre Dame de Paris". Instead, he proposed to rebuild the original medieval spire and bell tower over the transept, which had been removed in 1786 because it was unstable in the wind."
This is the problem with these tech giants: they come up with cool stuff, and then abandon it because it isn't making enough money, but then they don't at least put it out there for other people to adopt.
It is one of the most photographed landmarks in the world (with...billions(?) of pictures), so even without a proper 3D scan we probably could remodel the whole thing to an astounding precision.
For those asking about why there isn't visible water being sprayed on the fire... There's no point. Any firefighting efforts are focused on preventing the spread of the fire to other structures (potentially other parts of the same structure)
As a rule of thumb, the water flow necessary to extinguish a burning structure is the volume of the structure (in feet) divided by 100. The resulting number is (in rough numbers) the amount of water you need, in gallons per minute. For a fire this size, you're looking at tens of thousands of gallons of water per minute. It's just not possible.
I wonder how the firefighters feel about risking their lives for art, as opposed to other lives. I'm not saying I wouldn't risk human lives for certain works of art, but I can imagine some boots on the ground feeling salty about it.
Modern meanings of nationalism are synonymous with jingoism. It was once in the definition list on Wiktionary, but was conveniently removed late last year.
and if you follow that link, it refers to the 3rd definition of patriotism:
"The desire to compete with other nations; nationalism."
Patriotism is a better fit for this use, as there's the first definition:
"Love of one's country; devotion to the welfare of one's compatriots; passion which inspires one to serve one's country."
Generally, if we're not using literal dictionary definitions, in a political context, nationalism is overpowering patriotism where you want your country to be better than others at all costs. Patriotism is a love for you country and your people.
Nationalism, in current usage, tends to mean jingoism. The difference between that and patriotism could be described as the same as the difference between love and obsession.
France does seem to have a deep seated nationalism that I don't understand very well. They care extremely deeply about their cultural works to a degree that does not make sense to me.
"The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does" [0]
That seems like a feel-good post-hoc euphemism (but ok, I accept that language evolves).
Either way: how did France (the nation) make any of these artworks? You could argue it was made by anyone in the spectrum ranging from "the artist" to "the humanity". Stopping at France seems arbitrary and a bit... nationalistic.
If any institution "made" them, it's the Catholic Church, not France.
Given that France is "overwhelmingly Roman Catholic" [0], your last statement could be considered interchangeable. Perhaps (and I'm not French, so I don't know) many of the people consider them to be one and the same. Either way, it's a reasonable point that you made.
Assuming you're American this is the most hilariously ironic comment I've ever seen on HN.
Americans are some of most obnoxiously nationalistic people I've ever encountered. Note: I've lived both in Paris, and also NY and California (14 years in the US). Only in the US do you hear mobs of nationalistic folk chanting "USA USA." I've never been in France or the UK and seen similar things. Think about things like Americans boycotting French Fries and calling them "Freedom Fries" when France decided not to join the illegal and immoral Iraq War.
My favorite part of the "USA! USA!" chant is how seriously non-Americans are about it. Every time I've started or participated in a "USA! USA!" chant it was only about 15% nationalism and 85% a joke. Part of its enchanting humor is how that seems lost on everybody else.
There's an interesting attitude towards the word "nationalism" in US. As you say, it's probably one of the most enthusiastically civic nationalist nation in the world - indeed, to the point where American sociologists have described it as a "civic religion" at times. But the word "nationalism" itself is almost exclusively interpreted as "ethnic nationalism", and has an unambiguously negative vibe. So people who practice civic nationalism describe themselves as "patriots" instead.
I can imagine that too. I can also imagine the cathedral being so iconic that a sense of national pride might take over to try to salvage anything possible.
You've been posting a whole lot of unsubstantive comments recently. Could you please review the guidelines and stop? We ban accounts that won't post civilly and thoughtfully.
I wouldn't think that any individual firefighters are being commanded to do it against their will. It's not the same as going into a burning building to save lives.
I am a firefighter. Salvage operations are part of every fire (usually after the bulk of the fire is under control, but given sufficient manpower it also happens concurrently with fire attack operations).
They're not going to take huge risks. Any environment that would be extremely dangerous would be an area where any art has already been destroyed.
Swiss firefighters work on the four priorities of save lives, stop the fire, protect property from damage (including livestock), and protect the environment. Once lives and the spread of fire are under control, reducing the cost to the victims (emotional and financial) are why they are there.
Consider the Syrian archaeologist that hid artifacts from ISIL and refused to give them up. He gave his life and was tortured to death to preserve those artifacts [0].
How many human lives and human energy went into Notre Dame? How many lives would its continued existence inspire? Humans are far more temporary than art and culture. Art and culture connects us to the people that came before us.
Engaging in an activity with greater risk of killing you than usual is not the same as "giving one's life". These guys already fight fires for their day job. One more little bit of exposure to increased risk doesn't change the overall odds that much.
If a friend of yours called you and said "Hey, can you come pick up this painting I love before my house gets demolished?" would you drive over to pick it up?
Everyone in this thread is focused on whether or not the firefighters think the risk is worth it to save artwork. You're overlooking the fact that the sort of person who signs up to fight fires gets a rush out of being in a burning building in the first place. Saving the art is just a bonus...
While true, one should keep in mind that preservation is ultimately a futile endeavor. Nothing last forever. And yes, obviously that statement also applies to human life, but I'm certainly not going to judge anyone for refusing to endanger themselves for a painting.
PS: I had no idea it was so controversial to forgive people for not risking their lives for an inanimate object.
I think many people interpret your comment as devaluing the choice that some people make to take such risks.
If your argument is that we shouldn't criticize people for choosing not risk their for inanimate objects, can you point to such criticism in this thread? I haven't seen any.
I can see how my comment could be read that way, because it's kinda what I'm saying. The parent comment heavily implies that preserving culture, via the physical existence of artistic works, is worth more than a human life because it is just oh-so-important. If you really think your life is worth sacrificing to save these artifacts, well, I disagree. What they represent doesn't go away just because they do.
"Nothing lasts forever" is technically true, but I'm sure I don't need to point out how useless this statement is when it comes to making decisions. In situations like this fire, responders need to balance their own assessment of personal risk against the value of saving a given inanimate object.
Some people will categorically shy away from any perceived risk to their own safety, even if the estimated chance of saving a valuable object is very high. At the other extreme, some people would endure suffering and death to save what they recognize as priceless artifacts of history and culture.
But it’s not the whole story. If we had no connection to the past, it would feel like there’s no way to ever have a connection to the future, and thus it would feel pointless to do anything that is not entirely contained within your life time. Humanity would then become a very short term thinking species, and no great work or progress would ever be done.
One would think that they had a plan in place and some key pieces already scheduled to be saved in case of a fire. They probably stopped that operation once the fire spread to the totality of the structure. For a while, it was only in the roof since it started from the attic.
Sure, if you don't care about art, or national pride, you might not get it.
Put it this way... would you run into a burning building to try to save the Declaration of Independence? (Assuming you're an American) Would most firefighters? Seems reasonable to me. The art inside the Notre Dame is on that level of importance, to France and to civilization itself.
The Declaration of Independence isn’t just a historical artifact; it’s an expression of ideas and beliefs that Americans have always fought and died for.
Notre Dame is...was...a medieval Roman Catholic cathedral in a postmodern secular country, desecrated rather than revered by the revolutionaries who built modern France.
I’m not claiming the French people don’t care about Notre Dame. I’m merely observing that the analogy to the Declaration of Independence is significantly flawed. Notre Dame embodied ideas that modern France has repudiated rather than upheld.
History and culture are very important to the French people. Our Lady of Paris is one of the cores of the city.
The country and government being secular does not mean that the people left their Catholic roots behind. Atheist and religious French people share similar values and the past is very important to both.
While 39% of the population of France is not religious, 51% of the population is Catholic (2016). Even as an atheist French-Canadian I am hurt by the loss of this monument. I can't even begin to imagine how it feels to religious Parisians.
---
Edit: Someone on Reddit wrote a very interesting comment about its historical significance:
"Napoleon's coronation is incredibly recent in terms of Notre Dame's age. The amount of time between then and now represents less than 25% of the cathedral's existence.
It was built in 1163, one year after Genghis Khan's birth (or at least our best guess of his birth). Notre Dame predated Marco Polo and the founding of the Ottoman Empire by more than a century. It predates the creation of Islam. At the time of its construction, the best estimates for the global population are ~300 million (less than the current population of the United States). The cathedral was almost 200 years old when the Black Death destroyed a third of the world's population. The USA is currently younger than Notre Dame was when the Forbidden City was constructed in Beijing. It was 3 centuries old when Machu Picchu was built and Leonardo Da Vinci was born. It was over 400 years old when Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was built. It predated the original King James Version of the Bible by 450 years."
---
Among other relics, a piece of the Crown of Thorns was inside the Cathedral. I don't have a hard time picturing someone braving a blaze to save that.
Identity is a complex construct, and it needs symbols like that. Even if as a symbol of Church it's no longer relevant, it is still at least a past achievement to be proud of.
And we are talking a building that has survived the French history, the Revolutionaries didn't destroy it, the Communards didn't destroy it (and the destruction in this event were quite extensive http://paris1900.lartnouveau.com/paris00/commune_destruction...). It's a testament of the culture importance of the building and the fact it far exceeds its religious function.
Disclaimer: French and living in Paris (I've not seen the fire however).
isn't it just a piece of paper already scanned it very high quality? by burning it you are not really opposing any information value
no piece of paper/art and especially national pride is worth someone's health
I live in fourth most visited city in Europe and I couldn't care less if most touristy church burned down, it's just church, people are overly dramatic, most important it's nobody died and whatever will be outcome life will go on tomorrow and in two weeks nobody will remember about it in news
Most people would disagree with you. Many would act at risk of their own lives to save treasures that they feel are part of their national identity or human civilization.
Just because you don't feel that way doesn't mean they're all wrong.
I guess most of those people you describe are childless minority or people too young without children mumbling idealistic phrases
any sane parent would think twice risking his life over a THING. risking life to save other (strangers) lives it's questionable, risking life to save things it's just stupid
There is always a continuum of risk. By your argument, anyone who traveled to go view a historic monument is "just stupid", since there is a non-zero risk that they will die in a car accident along the way.
If entering a burning building (which isn't actually _that_ risky) to salvage one-of-a-kind historic artifacts isn't something you would chose to do, that's fine. Don't label the actions of those that make a different choice "stupid".
Push your logic a little farther. Any sane parent would think twice about risking their life for their child's life. Now push another direction... if you'd sacrifice your own life for your child, what about for someone else's child? A few years ago, I ran into the street in front of a moving car to try to save a child I didn't even know. I wouldn't have made it on time; luckily the car saw the child and slammed the brakes in time. But it's interesting to find just how deep one's own altruism will go. (Also interestingly, I did this in front of my spouse and our own children)
There's nothing unusual for being willing to die for a THING. Hell, people have sacrificed themselves in the millions for mere ideas. People fight to the death over tiny scraps of symbolic land.
It may seem stupid to you. It's stupid to me, too. But that's what people do. That's what people are.
millions also voted for trump, Hitler or believe earth it's flat, just because many people do stupid things doesn't make it good/rational, most of the society it's stupid/irrational, that's just fact (sadly democracy with equal voting rights it's best we came with), just because they are in majority doesn't make their acts right unless you identify with them, then good for you and feel free to ignore facts
as for saving someone's else child I would most likely not do it if I would calculate it's too risky for me (unless I would be stupid by instinct), if their own parent/guardian font care about their lives why should I? I don't expect other people saving my children. though it's not fair comparison,I am sure you have minute to decide if you save some piece of art work compared to split second decision to save living being
I also worked in past in insurance companies, after dealing with thousands of accidents my advice it's always run over animal, don't try to save it by avoiding it (unless it's boar or something similar comparable to concrete block/tree), try to fight your instinct, saw way too many dead people or in serious injury because they tried to save some stupid dog/fox etc and then crashed into some tree/building etc
It's unlikely an urban fire department is set up for any significant amount of drafting (pulling water from surface sources), if it's something they can do at all.
You're absolutely right though, if you want big water, that's the way to get it. It's just that "big water" doesn't even begin to approach the scale of the water that would be necessary to directly fight this fire.
I would expect the fire department of a large city with navigable waterways to have fireboats, though, which by their very nature draft water. Even if the boat's own nozzles don't reach. they can generally be used as pumps for hoses on shore.
The devil is in the details. A "short" distance on a "small" island might well amount to a huge amount of hose. Then there's the logistics of getting all of that in place and hooked up. The trucks on site would need to pump to increase the pressure to usable levels, and all of that would have to be compatible. Getting enough trucks onsite might be a logistical challenge just in itself.
The real world is complex. It's not all like software or taking multiple choice exams. Again the devil is in the details. Pay really close attention to the map legend. It looks like there's nearly 200 feet of distance from the closest water shown on that map and the nearest side of the cathedral. I really doubt that all fire trucks carry 200 feet of hard suction hose, or have pumps designed to draft through 200 feet of hard hose.
"The NFPA 1901, Standard for Automotive Fire Apparatus – Requires pumpers to carry:
15 feet of large soft sleeve hose or 20 feet of hard suction hose"
Also, even if you had a pump by the river, hand-jacking that length of LDH requires a huge amount of physical effort, and would tie up a lot of manpower during a critical phase of the operation.
You would never try to draft through 200 feet of hard suction. In fact, I'm relatively sure it would be impossible, since no matter how well you tighten the connections, there's pretty much always going to be a minute amount of vacuum loss at each coupling. In practice, few fire departments ever draft though more than 20 feet (2 sections) of hard suction, and even then it can be a challenge getting the pump primed, depending on any elevation difference between the water surface and the engine location, etc.
In real life, if you were going to draft in an environment like this, (leaving aside any reference to fire boats for a moment), you'd drive an engine to within 20' or so of the water, have it draft, and then relay water to the fire scene using (usually) 5" LDH. But sometimes even getting an engine to within 20' of the water can be a challenge, based on the geography and circumstances.
If the body of water you're drafting from is (strongly) subject to tides, that adds another complicating factor as your water source is now moving around, which could require constant re-positioning of the apparatus.
Lay people always see fires near large bodies of water and think "Why is water supply a problem, they're surrounded by water?!?" But it's often more complicated than that.
Source: was a firefighter and firefighting instructor for about a decade in a former life.
I don't have to pay close attention to the map. I've been there. It is absolutely close enough to the river to have hoses running directly from it. The fact that they didn't use it suggests it probably wasn't such a good idea, we are only dudes writing on the internet, they are firefighters with experience doing their job.
I wasn't able to find any hard sources, but I don't see any evidence that the Paris Fire Brigade has any boats with any significant pumping capacity. Most of their boats seem to be rescue/dive focused, with small master stream deck guns.
It's unlikely an urban fire department is set up for any significant amount of drafting (pulling water from surface sources), if it's something they can do at all.
My understanding, which is probably quite out of date, is that it's mostly harbor firefighting boats which had this ability.
A coworker of mine points out that many of the San Francisco manholes are actually covers for cisterns of water, which exist primarily for fighting fires after an earthquake possibly takes out the water mains and starts many fires. I should hope that San Francisco fire trucks can draft water to use these.
Park the truck next to the cistern. Connect a length of hose to the pump supply, drop the hose into the cistern. The pump will move water until it loses suction pressure.
Is the hose to be dropped into the cistern different from the other hoses? I would expect it to be reinforced, such that it wouldn't collapse from air pressure. Hoses downstream from a high pressure pump wouldn't need such reinforcement. However, it's different upstream from such pumps.
You can recognize the cisterns because there are big (like 20 ft in diameter) brick circles inlaid into the street in SF to mark the cisterns. Neat once you know what to look for
> It's unlikely an urban fire department is set up for any significant amount of drafting (pulling water from surface sources), if it's something they can do at all.
London Fire Brigade for example has nine special pumps that can draw 2000 gallons a minute each from river or lake supplies. So that's 18,000 gallons a minute just from them.
Yeah, but that's not "a significant amount". It's certainly less than half of what you would need to fight this fire head on. That's also assuming all those engines are in-service, staffed, and can get there and get set up within a reasonable amount of time.
It's unlikely an urban fire department is set up for any significant amount of drafting (pulling water from surface sources), if it's something they can do at all.
SFFD trucks have that capability, and it was used in the 1989 earthquake. It's intended for pulling water from the underground cisterns marked by a big ring of bricks in SF intersections.
Terrible for the equipment to run salt water, but they had to.
I thought SFFD was some brand used by the French, but of course it's just USA-centric naming. (Took me forever to understand BART and I still have to look up name-based time zones like MST, which, no, thanks Wikipedia, is not Malaysia Standard Time at +8 but Mountain time at -7.)
For anyone else confused: this earthquake was in San Francisco and this is about their Fire Department. It doesn't mean that French fire trucks have that capability 30 years later.
Yeah, I've seen at least two draft lines running. But at best that's going to be 3-4k GPM. Enough for a couple of those big water streams. You'd need >10x that to fight a fire like this head on (which they clearly didn't have, since they immediately went to salvage and exposure protection measures)
The Seine is not directly beside Notre Dame. It’s a steep drop and 200-300ft away depending on angles. A standard fire hose is 50ft. A supply/relay hose is typically 100ft. They can’t just hook up a few hoses, dunk them in the Seine, and then instantly put the fire out.
There were notable logistical issues to get enough firefighters on-site given it’s an island, and there were a ton of people around when the fire broke out. They wound up having 400 firefighters on-site until midnight to get it under control and save the structure. I’m pretty confident they did all they could, and HN’s armchair firefighters aren’t likely to have done any better.
The equipment used to pull from a hydrant is substantially different to the equipment used to draft (suction) surface water. Consider, for instance, that hydrants are under pressure.
The big difference is that you need rigid tubing, colloquially known as "hard suction" hose to draft from a static source. Typically soft-walled hose would collapse if you applied suction to it. At least in the US, most engines carry hard suction tubing, but I believe some urban engines may forgo it, opting to use that space for something they use more often. And even if they do have it, the engineers may not have a lot of experience setting up a drafting operation.
Would only work until the engine is empty, then you have to hold up using the local hydrants (which will likely not be able to supply six fire engines going full throttle)
Flying water tankers could do it, but they must act fast
(Edit: All these armchair quarterbacks think they know better than the president's team of social media advisers and vetters, they have no idea what goes into that kind of operation and shouldn't question the president based on spur of the moment analysis. You don't think professionals would have already considered all these points before still going forward with the tanker recommendation at the presidential level through the official communication channel?)
Is it worse than the cathedral burning down? Because they do it in suburban environments in southern California all the time and no one has ever died from the fire retardant. Fires, on the other hand, have a much worse track record in urban environments. It's so obvious that people hate the idea because Trump suggested it. And frankly, he's making you into close-minded fools.
Fire retardant might work, but is likely not readily on hand in an urban environment (and is really meant to prevent spread of fire, not to put a fire out).
Dumping actual water would be a bad idea both for the people and the structure, simply because dumping heavy things from high places is generally dangerous.
If you start using tankers, you have to evacuate everyone from the area (in a larger area than their current evacuation cordon). It would mean all other on-site firefighting operations would have to stop.
Using aerial tankers would be unsafe (flying planes are very low altitudes through a city), and would result in a net reduction in firefighting efforts on scene.
Yes. Potentially far, far worse. And people have absolutely died from using fire retardant delivered from air tankers.
These planes have to fly extremely close to the ground to deliver their payload (which is spread over an area far too large to be effective in this case anyway btw) and too often the plane can lose control, whether from sudden unweighting or the turbulence from the fire and crash. This can kill everyone on board and usually starts a new fire to boot.
Donald trump just picks an idea that will sound like "common sense" to a lot of people. It makes sense in a simplistic kind of way, but is fundamentally flawed. But people get to feel angry that their ideas are not being taken seriously. And that the world is being ruined by stupid liberals who won't do the obvious thing. As if a fire chief in Paris has a duty to try out bad ideas just to protect the feelings of a random Twitter handle and his followers.
A reasonable person might think that it did occur to emergency fire services to respond quickly, particularly in a nation and city with a great history in the field.
A reasonable person might also think that the man put in charge of the largest nuclear stockpile in the world, that could literally end the world, would have already considered that and knew air tankers were the most viable option, so long as they acted fast after his communication.
“Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”
Airtankers, waterbombers, and air attack are all common terms used to refer to aerial firefighting. I can't imagine this is something unique to North America but both the United States and Canada employ planes and helicopters to drop water and fire retardants on forest fires in remote areas where conventional firefighting equipment cannot reach.
We also have a form of firefighter called a Smoke Jumper that's the equivalent of a Paratrooper for fighting fires. They're deployed in these remote areas to clear out areas ahead of fires to constrict or redirect fires.
According to a response paraphrased from Le Monde, the problem is that the water pressure by an aerial tanker could well destroy what is trying to be saved.
""Truly weird Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky reminds me of a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain. He was terrible at DEBATE!"" & another:
"".@FrankLuntz is a low class slob who came to my office looking for consulting work and I had zero interest. Now he picks anti-Trump panels!"" - who do you think vetted these? Which professionals?
The obvious and sad truth is; Trump watches TV, and randomly reacts real time on twitter with his own words. You can figure out what he is working (and NOT working on) by simply looking at what TV shows, channels, and people-on-TV he refers to as he continues to tweet throughout the day.
Yeah, now that the fire is progressing into the "decay" phase (as it has burned through most of its fuel) there is less risk of spread to other exposures, so it makes sense to start shifting fire streams towards areas of active fire.
The other thing those people might consider, and this includes our president, is that they aren't firefighters, have no idea what to do, and surely live in a place unequal to Paris in any parameter upon which you'd care to compare. IT'S PARIS. They're in Paris. And to paraphrase Chevy Chase: You're not. They know what they're doing. Imagine you're the Paris fire chief. That's like being the NYC fire chief. Such a person has a distaste for explaining to superiors why they mismanaged a firefighting operation, and has a lifetime of experience, and hence, tends to manage it properly.
"Must act quickly!" Ya think? Hopefully the fire department in Paris, France is listening for gems like that from out here in the boonies / the ghetto hemisphere. How many medieval churches are there on our whole continent? Call us if you want a church bombed.
Shoot, you're probably right, and I fell for it. I guess the unintended consequence of my strict "ignore" policy over the last 3 years, is that I'm still a novice 3 years later. (Rarely do I see those brainfarts, but this one was unfortunately quoted in an article.)
It would be nice if there was somewhere to find high quality news reporting that avoided toxic stuff like tweets. I'm not sure what that embedded tweet adds to this BBC story besides getting people worked up over something that's totally unrelated. You'd think Notre Dame burning down would be enough.
Maybe a more optimistic interpretation is that people naturally want to try to help and would rather speak up than feel helpless even if their advice is not particularly good or useful.
It's complaining about a certain ignorant disrespect I've seen personally today, so I see it as corrective and therefore constructive. But I think I get what you're saying, though your comment is a little threadbare; I'd be interested in your full argument/reasoning.
EDIT: I added a few words to the grandparent post to try to make my intent clearer.
There was nothing disrespectful about Trump's tweet. I find it strange that you can't use his name, as if it's somehow shameful. That's disrespect to me.
Not enough people on the internet read what they're saying outloud before posting. I blame this on the low quality of discourse on the intnernet. You're very welcome by the way.
I once had a neighbor whose house burned. From the outside it definitely looked like the fire crews were taking their time arriving, setting up camp, preparing, aiming, etc. But maybe acting intelligently isn't always the same as acting quickly.
I really wasn't monitoring my use of the name. Though obviously I am now. Anyway you guessed right: My lack of respect for the guy we're talking about is so deep and vast that this forum won't tolerate my going into it. And rightly so, because ultimately it's boring as heck.
Actually I think I was, if anything, charitably conferring tons of undue respect on that guy, by calling him "our president," thereby not only acknowledging his office but accepting him as "ours," both of which are more than some are willing to do. Ya can't please some people I guess.
It was disrespectful because donald, the self-proclaimed expert on all the things, doesn't understand what he is suggesting, and doesn't understand that what he is suggesting is not helping anyone/anything except his ego.
Any thoughts on why there isn't more evident action from building fire suppression systems? At least in smaller systems, I've seen sprinklers that work externally to the building to protect tall wooden spires, etc.
If there was fire suppression in the building, it likely didn't cover the construction scaffolding, and once that got burning, it was certainly hot enough to overwhelm any sprinklers.
There are four major phases in the life of a fire, incipient, growth, fully developed, and decay. Sprinklers are designed to keep a fire from progressing from incipient to growth. Once it makes that transition, the battle is lost.
I suppose that if it were possible, it would be very heavy, and could break the very structures it tried to preserve.
I wonder if injecting large amounts of CO2 or N2 inside the structure would be feasible.
Water-soluble foam, which is much lighter weight and easier to produce in large volumes, is also known to be used to contain large fires, especially of oil / fuel.
First, it's the temperature. A fire is extinguished in the first minutes; after a few hours, you can do nothing but contain it. It's the problem with roof fires: they burn for a long time without being seen, and are therefore powerful when visible.
The aerial tankers are at Nimes. Helicoptors are a little closer, but more in the south. If you use one or the other, it would take several hours.. After the detection of the fire, by which time it has grown in power.
Specific complication today: the discovery was at the end of the afternoon. The planes can't operate in night (experimentation is ongouging), especially in an environment as complex as Paris. Even if we send them, they couldn't intervene until tomorrow.
Second point: access. A roof, it's waterproof. An aerial tanker would douse the tiles or copper cover, but not a drop would arrive on the file except at the stage where the roof has already began to fall. Then, the plane could douse the flames. But it's much, much too late: by the time the first tiles fell, the carpentry would already be gravely weak. In fact, these fires only become visible when the damage is already profound.
Sending the aerial tankers over a building, that's already done. But for exterior fires. Under a roof, that isn't useful until the roof has already fallen. That's why these planes don't service this kind of fire. In fact, at the moment where one can still save the roof, these fires are only accessible by the interior.
That's the difficulty with the work of firefighting. If they could, they would love to intervene without plunging into the flames... But while it burns under a roof, it's necessary to go find the fire.
Correction after several reactions: when I speak of aircraft without precision, I think especially of helicopters. Canadair is clearly excluded by effect of its backwash, which can provoke a collapse of the carpentry, already severely weakened.
Based on some of the other commentators, tens of thousands of gallons per minute sounds doable. One mentioned a single truck can do two. Get ten or more of those trucks (which I assume Paris has) and that seems like a decent amount of water.
By "tens of thousands" I meant more on the order of 60k+.
Getting 10 engines there wouldn't be the issue. Supplying them with water would be. Given that it's an island, they would be limited to the capacity of the water main serving the island.
> For those asking about why there isn't visible water being sprayed on the fire... There's no point. Any firefighting efforts are focused on preventing the spread of the fire to other structures (potentially other parts of the same structure)
> As a rule of thumb, the water flow necessary to extinguish a burning structure is the volume of the structure (in feet) divided by 100. The resulting number is (in rough numbers) the amount of water you need, in gallons per minute. For a fire this size, you're looking at tens of thousands of gallons of water per minute. It's just not possible.
I wonder if the fire could be covered with a huge tarpaulin or alike to try to suppress it.
In these sentences, you're using "hot" and "cool" to refer to temperature, and using "thermal load" to describe what physicists and engineers unambiguously call "heat," as in the amount of thermal energy held within a specific object of a certain mass, heat capacity, and temperature. In my admittedly limited experience with thermodynamics (currently in grad school for physics), "thermal load" seems to describe the exact same thing as heat, except it's less common. In fact, it initially confused me because of the concept of "thermal mass," which refers to the total heat capacity of a given object = mass * (heat capacity per unit mass).
Short of a very precise aerial tanker mission (and how long would it take to spin that up or get lucky with an aircraft in training nearby, fill up and then vector it), no way to put it out. It might've been feasible as there are very few tall buildings or structures in Paris and it's in the middle of the river with nothing much on either side.
People also should know that simultaneous fires on multiple floors of multi-story buildings typically aren't possible to fight either, reducing possible efforts to containment and damage mitigation.
I don't get all the hype about tankers... A tanker load would do significant structural damage to the building, would be a huge risk in city with a lot of tall structures, would be totally ineffective on the bulk of the fire (that's below the roof), and would require pulling out all the firefighters on the scene, significantly reducing the overall firefighting capacity.
This is basically what the chief of the Paris fire brigade told the news (dumping a load of water on the building would finish destroying it). Add to that the fact that the closest Canadairs are 600 miles away and designed to draw water from the sea.
It seems like the weight of amount of water/retardant to effectively extinguish a fully-involved fire would be a problem AND simultaneously smothering the fire underneath AND reducing core coal temperatures below ignition point would need to happen. It's a thought towards a possible solution to a ruinous class of fires, but there appears to be a need for a gentle and widely-deployed technology to rescue historic structures in the midst of fire events.
1. Cool an outer structure rapidly with lightweight/gently-applied, inert, high specific heat material from above.
2. Thixotropic gently-applied, inert, high specific heat material inner structure (possibly same as 1.).
> Firefighters were rushing to try to contain a fire that has broken out at the cathedral, which police said began accidentally and was linked to building work at the site.
Which logical fallacy is this anyway? Why are people against just waiting more than 5 effing seconds before jumping to conclusions with no evidence these days?
If I told you three hospitals were targets of attacks, then a similar situation happened at a fourth hospital, would your first thought be that it was an accident?
What's the harm in waiting until we have more evidence before we start throwing out ideas? Why is it important to be the first to declare "I see the pattern!"?
"Linked to building work" could easily mean "they left a heater on". Workers don't have to be there at the exact moment for it to be related to their activity.
I mean sure, but a common issue with conspiracies is they become so pervasive in social media, like top comments on hacker news, and then draw in the not-so-conspiracy-minded in.
A lot of "conspiracy theorists" were proved right by the Snowden discoveries. Not all of them are lunatics, some extrapolate facts and expect something most people would not. One is not either sane or conspiracy minded, there are a lot of people that would be helped with facts.
No conspiracy theory needed. I'm not sure about contractors in Paris, but here in America a large percentage of them seem to be completely incompetent and do shoddy work, so it's no surprise to me that they'd cause a fire.
Remember the old saying: never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity or incompetence.
Even if they were the best, most careful contractors, all of us make mistakes in our jobs. The main difference is that some of these guys are often working with things that are on fire or nearly on fire to begin with. It doesn't take much of an accident to start a structure fire in those scenarios.
What is the relevance to HN, and doesn't the rest of the Internet media, cover this very good on their own?
A sad day for both HN and Notre Dame, in my book :/
Edit:
[I won't remove my bad comment, since there are several responses relevant to it, but I would like to apologise, for my typing before thinking (and even before re-reading the policy's I, myself are commenting on) - and lastly for the non-relevant nature, and over dramatisation, of this comment. I see all that I did wrong, and will try to make better choices in the future ;) Sincerely, tirrit.]
Yes, and i lost my karma quicker than I can say, don't take it personal ;P But I guess emotions go wild with these things. I off course mean no offence, and hope they can save as much as possible within firefighter safety.
Though I would think it was outside the HN posting guidelines.
I'm not an expert (routinely get downvoted every time I open my mouth, I'm used to Reddit's style of commenting), but HN's guidelines do say that any topic that might interest a hacker is good and doesn't have to do with programming, startups, etc.
Guidelines also say that one shouldn't post things that don't add to the conversation, I guess your comment is a classic of not adding anything and that's why you got downvoted.
As for the rest, it's completely crazy. If what we know now is true, the fire was started on the scaffolds (I bet a cigarette), just imagine that the company was supposed to restore the thing, and destroyed it.
Even though -I- have trouble understanding the "hacker" relevance, the people has spoken :) And you are right, my initial comment did not contribute in any relevant way - I can see that in retrospect. For that I truly apologise.
And yes, it would be crazy if it all started, with something like a cigarette or similar.
This is just an anecdote, and I wanted this to be a reply to the OP, but I've always felt there's a weird sort of connection between the stonemasons who built these masterpieces and the hackers of today.
It was the center of learning, during the Medieval era. The idea of left (progressive) vs. right (conservative), comes from here. Student's lived on a the left bank and spoke Latin.
What could be salvaged from the Dark Ages, in terms of knowledge, was sheltered around Notre Dame.
However I do not believe that this is the most 'prosperous' time. It is the opposite. Life expectancy is falling in the West. This generation will not live as long as their parents, nor be as wealth, or successful. In places like Russia life expectancy for males is just 66 years (alcohol, suicide, poverty).
Will we look back at this era, a hundred years from now, and see that from the 1980s till now as a slow steady decline, slightly buoyed by the Internet, but with most opportunities squandered.
"The pressure is coming from the radical secularists or anti-religion groups as well as feminist activists who tend to target churches as a symbol of the patriarchy that needs to be dismantled,"
I would not be surprised to hear it was sparked by Islamic extremists. According to wikipedia there were two known attempts on the cathedral in the past 3 years:
> 8 September 2016: Notre Dame Cathedral bombing attempt. Arrests made after an explosives-filled car was discovered parked alongside the cathedral.
> 10 February 2017: Police arrested four people in Montpellier, France, including a 16-year-old girl and a 20-year-old man already known by authorities to have ties to extremist Islamist organizations, on charges of plotting to travel to Paris and attack the cathedral.[37]
This is the most probable cause: dozen of churchs degradation have been done since the beginning of the year. Two days ago a pakistani destroyed things at Saint Denis, and last month there was a fire at Saint Sulpice. Everyone knows who can have done that but will the government will have the balls to say the truth? This is our 09/11.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 158 ms ] threadThere are also probably concerns about thermal expansions as well. The stone might resettle a little bit differently.
If you drop water on a structure like this, you end up having a collapsed building that is also on fire.
Edit: Note the absolute phrasing of the parent comment and that the spray force in a strong downpour isn't much less than what's done with firefighting planes in situations that call for that level of pressure.
Lots of water at once versus less spread over a long time.
A DC-10 Air Tanker carries 12,000 US gallons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC-10_Air_Tanker
All said, that's 45.4 metric tons.
Go ahead, stand under one and let us know how it goes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87hfWatbVPY
You people are all being ridiculous today.
Why don't you step back for a moment and just admit that given the premises
-Firefighting airplanes can effectively spray in a way that doesn't harm trees
-Buildings are fine in extended substantial downpours
That it must follow
-Spraying a building with a plane in such a configuration would not collapse it
Otherwise you are the clueless one. This is absurd. At least you downvoters (who are ignoring the site guidelines) are letting me see some aesthetically pleasing upvote configurations again when it goes back up, so I appreciate it.
The facts stand, as have been reiterated in the thread above:
- Firefighting airplanes can effectively spray in a way that doesn't harm trees (by releasing the 12,000+ gallons over a very large area)
- Buildings are fine in extended substantial downpours (which is significantly less water per second than an air-tanker dump)
To your thought's end:
- Spraying a building with a plane in such a configuration would not collapse it
Yes, it's possible to spray the cathedral with water in such a way that it will not collapse it, but that configuration is that very little water gets on the cathedral, and is instead spread over pretty much the entire island in the Seine.
At this point in time, however, it likely doesn't matter. Since most of the building has collapsed already, due to the fire. Like we said it would.
"The weight of the water and the intensity of the drop at low altitude could indeed weaken the structure of Notre-Dame and result in collateral damage to the buildings in the vicinity."
So, yeah, I'm gonna trust the experts on this one, not random armchair Internet quarterbacking.
But sure, go ahead and retroactively correct yourself.
The larger point is that by the time you release high enough to not concentrate a huge amount of force from the water on the building, you're just not doing that much, not that much more than a really heavy natural downpour for a few seconds (which wouldn't be nearly enough to put out a fire this large).
And the trees aren't an apt comparison because the trees aren't taking the brunt of the water; the ground is. However, the roof of the structure would be taking the entire brunt of the falling water. Several tens of thousands of pounds times whatever speed its falling at squared equals a lot of kinetic energy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au-vMfRuYMg
The difference would be like standing in the shower for 40 minutes, versus being hit my an entire tub full of water going at the same speed all at once.
I remember during the Khan Academy controversy a few years back, an educator commented on reddit about the difficulty in teaching some kids about rates. Some kids just don't get rates. They think of speed as something like "a feeling of intensity." They just don't have an abstract, generalized understanding of "N things per unit time."
Think about that for a moment. Think about all of the potential for miscommunication.
I'm comparing strong rain to water plane spray. Maybe the output of some would be too severe, but clearly some are suitable.
Got it. I learned something new today.
"it is the largest fire service in Europe and the third largest urban fire service in the world, after the Tokyo Fire Department and New York City Fire Department. Its motto is "Save or Perish" (French "Sauver ou périr")."
I'm sure they have enough capacity.
Also you don't just drop water from planes above cities... this makes no sense.
What do you think is more likely? That there is not a single stream of water hitting it, or there are plenty of fire fighters at the scene you just happen not to have seen any pictures of them?
I saw on the live stream a couple of water jets, from aerial platforms, at the corners (probably as close as they could get with the trucks). But my guess is that most of the firefighting is happening on the ground level (some of it inside the building), out of sight from the distant cameras.
Superb way to collapse the structure, incinerate/crush the firefighters, and endanger pretty much anyone around the area, all while leaving pretty much nothing to be saved. Say nothing of anyone that might be trapped in there.
Hopefully they already evacuated everyone.
The news streams just started showing water being put on it, looks like the smoke is dying down, hopefully they can save it!
Wouldn't the wind from the rotors increase the amount of oxygen?
But now that Trump has said it, a bazillion MAGAbots will be asking why they didn't use a plane, and start looking for a French conspiracy to destroy civilization or something.
Update: In the news they said that firefighters are entering the building to save as much art as possible before spraying water.
This is a _really_ hard fire to fight. Their first priority is going to be ensuring everyone is safe, and likely setting up interior and exterior positions where they intend to stop the fire from spreading (the areas that are already involved are a total loss, let them go and focus on saving what can be saved).
For getting a fire down you either have to prevent it from access to oxygen or prevent spreading.
A big fire like that can't be covered completely to be cut of from oxygen.
With fire control you can however try to cool down the areas close to inflammation to prevent further spreading. Save what can be saved, like the lower walls.
And what's the reason for not using water (or other) to put out the fire? I'm genuinely curious
People are just commenting on what they see.
edit: I'm so sorry HN, apparently I offended people.
I have gone through this process last summer in my company and it's really frustrating when people spend energy on questioning everything you do instead of helping.
Often times people with no expertise can offer a helpful outside perspective. This is particularly true in cases where an exception to policy or historical process is what is holding things back. Because the ignorant person is not biased by current policies and processes. Now I'm wondering if everyone at work hates me for having this role.
This may be a role if 1) you actually listen very carefully and 2)things are not already on fire. There is a time for this but there are also times when you just have to let the experts do their thing.
One thing that always bugs me that consultants and advisers often show up during crisis and suck up a lot of energy that could be used for solving the problem. But as soon as the crisis is over and there is time to discuss ways to prevent future problems all the execs and consultants suddenly disappear.
The correct question here is: what don’t I know about firefighting that would explain the actions of the firefighters here?
But hey...maybe it was only an "accident". https://www.newsweek.com/spate-attacks-catholic-churches-fra...
Notre Dame will be fine.
The walls maybe, but the roof is mostly wood, made 800+ years ago, it's gone, the statues, the drapes, the windows, the bells and the clock are gone forever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden_Frauenkirche#Reconstru...
Am I shocked and saddened for this fire? Yes of course, I lived on the Rue de Roi de Sicile - a few minutes walk. I've drawn it many times.
Do I have hope for the future of the installation? It's France: of course I do.
Are we watching the same stream? The entire roof is gone already.
Also, York Minster (like, I suspect, Notre Dame) has world-class stonemasons and glaziers with expertise in medieval building methods, which certainly helps with the restoration.
It's way too early to say it 'will be fine'. A fire like this could destroy the entire structure.
Sadly, no, it won't. The area where the fire looks worst was already deteriorating significantly -- if you visited in recent years, you would have seen heavy duty nets and the like to control damaged masonry, for example -- and you have a lot of materials that are either combustible or at the very least susceptible to heat damage of one kind or another.
One of the great architectural wonders is falling apart before our eyes, and it is just very, very sad.
[Edit: Shortly after I wrote this, the spire fell. A spokesman for the cathedral has confirmed that they do not expect any of the timber interior to survive the fire. So, so sad.]
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
https://aleteia.org/2019/02/16/string-of-attacks-on-french-c...
There is nothing to be lost in waiting for actual investigative results. And, fwiw, the early images clearly point to the fire breaking out in the roof, where construction scaffolds are clearly visible in all the images.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"Part of the reason is that Sweden’s gang violence, long contained within low-income suburbs, has begun to spill out. In large cities, hospitals report armed confrontations in emergency rooms, and school administrators say threats and weapons have become commonplace. "[1]
Gang violence just spills like a liquid into different places "all by itself" and that's a reason why crime is rising.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/world/europe/sweden-crime...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/pariss-notre-cat...
https://www.newsweek.com/spate-attacks-catholic-churches-fra...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleteia
seems like it's an almost official catholic source
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm truly heartbroken
Many Americans live in wooden houses that are much older than that. The biggest problem tends to be termites.
Protected from fungus (rot) and insects, wood can last indefinitely. How to achieve that, of course, varies widely.
The Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, Restored by Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Jean Baptiste Lassus -- http://www.victorianweb.org/art/architecture/vld/3.html
"The Commission on Historical Monuments approved most of Viollet-le-Duc's plans, but rejected his proposal to remove the choir built under Louis XIV. Viollet-le-Duc himself turned down a proposal to add two new spires atop the towers, arguing that such a monument "would be remarkable but would not be Notre Dame de Paris". Instead, he proposed to rebuild the original medieval spire and bell tower over the transept, which had been removed in 1786 because it was unstable in the wind."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Viollet-le-Duc#Not...
https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/105852910-155535029154...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nwEFCBLrdk
Its going to feel a little bit different building one of these now.
The Photosynth TED talk uses Notre Dame as an example of reconstructing geometry from a random selection of photos.
https://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photos...
Skip to 3:45 or so.
Microsoft canned Photosynth and seemed to make very little effort to preserve all the content.
Google is especially guilty of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/portail-notre-dame-de-paris-...
Sadly, innovation has moved to China. All the West has left are rent seeking companies likes Facebook, which are able to hide money and not pay taxes.
As a rule of thumb, the water flow necessary to extinguish a burning structure is the volume of the structure (in feet) divided by 100. The resulting number is (in rough numbers) the amount of water you need, in gallons per minute. For a fire this size, you're looking at tens of thousands of gallons of water per minute. It's just not possible.
(The news networks are pretty much as clueless to the situation as everyone else, so take with a grain of salt)
Edit: They are now spraying the stone structures.
I imagine even the most reticent would be jumping in on this one.
[0] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/nationalism
"The desire to compete with other nations; nationalism."
Patriotism is a better fit for this use, as there's the first definition:
"Love of one's country; devotion to the welfare of one's compatriots; passion which inspires one to serve one's country."
Generally, if we're not using literal dictionary definitions, in a political context, nationalism is overpowering patriotism where you want your country to be better than others at all costs. Patriotism is a love for you country and your people.
Patriotism is like caring for your family.
Sydney J. Harris
[0] - https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sydney_J._Harris
Either way: how did France (the nation) make any of these artworks? You could argue it was made by anyone in the spectrum ranging from "the artist" to "the humanity". Stopping at France seems arbitrary and a bit... nationalistic.
If any institution "made" them, it's the Catholic Church, not France.
[0] - https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La%C3%AFcit%C3%A9
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianization_of_France_d...
Americans are some of most obnoxiously nationalistic people I've ever encountered. Note: I've lived both in Paris, and also NY and California (14 years in the US). Only in the US do you hear mobs of nationalistic folk chanting "USA USA." I've never been in France or the UK and seen similar things. Think about things like Americans boycotting French Fries and calling them "Freedom Fries" when France decided not to join the illegal and immoral Iraq War.
Very fine people on all sides of course.
I must admit, you’re the first person I’ve ever heard refer to a USA chant as enchanting.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I go back and forth between HN and Reddit, I guess I'm used to Reddit, will pay more attention.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Fire_Brigade
If they get 8 months of training before employment, I kinda hope they spend more time on the theory and practice of firefighting than being a soldier.
They're not going to take huge risks. Any environment that would be extremely dangerous would be an area where any art has already been destroyed.
How many human lives and human energy went into Notre Dame? How many lives would its continued existence inspire? Humans are far more temporary than art and culture. Art and culture connects us to the people that came before us.
[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33984006
It's a pretty personal question. I admire the archaeologist you described, but I believe no one should feel obligated to do the same thing.
How much risk would you be willing to take to save the artworks of Notre Dame?
If there's even a small but significant risk to one's life then nobody should feel obligated to do it.
PS: I had no idea it was so controversial to forgive people for not risking their lives for an inanimate object.
If your argument is that we shouldn't criticize people for choosing not risk their for inanimate objects, can you point to such criticism in this thread? I haven't seen any.
Some people will categorically shy away from any perceived risk to their own safety, even if the estimated chance of saving a valuable object is very high. At the other extreme, some people would endure suffering and death to save what they recognize as priceless artifacts of history and culture.
I think that's the best explanation I've ever heard for why art and culture are so important.
This type of art is irreplaceable and art cannot walk away from the fire. At least we know it has zero chance of doing so, unless someone shows up
Put it this way... would you run into a burning building to try to save the Declaration of Independence? (Assuming you're an American) Would most firefighters? Seems reasonable to me. The art inside the Notre Dame is on that level of importance, to France and to civilization itself.
Notre Dame is...was...a medieval Roman Catholic cathedral in a postmodern secular country, desecrated rather than revered by the revolutionaries who built modern France.
The country and government being secular does not mean that the people left their Catholic roots behind. Atheist and religious French people share similar values and the past is very important to both.
To flip your point around, they'd save it because it's symbolically important. Same with the art in the Notre Dame.
I’ve literally been explaining that this whole time. Please try to read and comprehend things before issuing these vacuous replies.
---
Edit: Someone on Reddit wrote a very interesting comment about its historical significance:
"Napoleon's coronation is incredibly recent in terms of Notre Dame's age. The amount of time between then and now represents less than 25% of the cathedral's existence.
It was built in 1163, one year after Genghis Khan's birth (or at least our best guess of his birth). Notre Dame predated Marco Polo and the founding of the Ottoman Empire by more than a century. It predates the creation of Islam. At the time of its construction, the best estimates for the global population are ~300 million (less than the current population of the United States). The cathedral was almost 200 years old when the Black Death destroyed a third of the world's population. The USA is currently younger than Notre Dame was when the Forbidden City was constructed in Beijing. It was 3 centuries old when Machu Picchu was built and Leonardo Da Vinci was born. It was over 400 years old when Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was built. It predated the original King James Version of the Bible by 450 years."
---
Among other relics, a piece of the Crown of Thorns was inside the Cathedral. I don't have a hard time picturing someone braving a blaze to save that.
And we are talking a building that has survived the French history, the Revolutionaries didn't destroy it, the Communards didn't destroy it (and the destruction in this event were quite extensive http://paris1900.lartnouveau.com/paris00/commune_destruction...). It's a testament of the culture importance of the building and the fact it far exceeds its religious function.
Disclaimer: French and living in Paris (I've not seen the fire however).
What matters about the DoI are the ideas, not the original piece of paper.
no piece of paper/art and especially national pride is worth someone's health
I live in fourth most visited city in Europe and I couldn't care less if most touristy church burned down, it's just church, people are overly dramatic, most important it's nobody died and whatever will be outcome life will go on tomorrow and in two weeks nobody will remember about it in news
Just because you don't feel that way doesn't mean they're all wrong.
any sane parent would think twice risking his life over a THING. risking life to save other (strangers) lives it's questionable, risking life to save things it's just stupid
If entering a burning building (which isn't actually _that_ risky) to salvage one-of-a-kind historic artifacts isn't something you would chose to do, that's fine. Don't label the actions of those that make a different choice "stupid".
There's nothing unusual for being willing to die for a THING. Hell, people have sacrificed themselves in the millions for mere ideas. People fight to the death over tiny scraps of symbolic land.
It may seem stupid to you. It's stupid to me, too. But that's what people do. That's what people are.
as for saving someone's else child I would most likely not do it if I would calculate it's too risky for me (unless I would be stupid by instinct), if their own parent/guardian font care about their lives why should I? I don't expect other people saving my children. though it's not fair comparison,I am sure you have minute to decide if you save some piece of art work compared to split second decision to save living being
I also worked in past in insurance companies, after dealing with thousands of accidents my advice it's always run over animal, don't try to save it by avoiding it (unless it's boar or something similar comparable to concrete block/tree), try to fight your instinct, saw way too many dead people or in serious injury because they tried to save some stupid dog/fox etc and then crashed into some tree/building etc
That's only like six fire engines, looking up the stats. (But I don't know anything about fire fighting.)
Even if you had that pumping capacity on site, there's no way the municipal water supply could deliver that much water.
You're absolutely right though, if you want big water, that's the way to get it. It's just that "big water" doesn't even begin to approach the scale of the water that would be necessary to directly fight this fire.
The real world is complex. It's not all like software or taking multiple choice exams. Again the devil is in the details. Pay really close attention to the map legend. It looks like there's nearly 200 feet of distance from the closest water shown on that map and the nearest side of the cathedral. I really doubt that all fire trucks carry 200 feet of hard suction hose, or have pumps designed to draft through 200 feet of hard hose.
"The NFPA 1901, Standard for Automotive Fire Apparatus – Requires pumpers to carry: 15 feet of large soft sleeve hose or 20 feet of hard suction hose"
http://tkolb.net/tra_sch/FireHose/HoseBasics.html
In real life, if you were going to draft in an environment like this, (leaving aside any reference to fire boats for a moment), you'd drive an engine to within 20' or so of the water, have it draft, and then relay water to the fire scene using (usually) 5" LDH. But sometimes even getting an engine to within 20' of the water can be a challenge, based on the geography and circumstances.
If the body of water you're drafting from is (strongly) subject to tides, that adds another complicating factor as your water source is now moving around, which could require constant re-positioning of the apparatus.
Lay people always see fires near large bodies of water and think "Why is water supply a problem, they're surrounded by water?!?" But it's often more complicated than that.
Source: was a firefighter and firefighting instructor for about a decade in a former life.
My understanding, which is probably quite out of date, is that it's mostly harbor firefighting boats which had this ability.
A coworker of mine points out that many of the San Francisco manholes are actually covers for cisterns of water, which exist primarily for fighting fires after an earthquake possibly takes out the water mains and starts many fires. I should hope that San Francisco fire trucks can draft water to use these.
Park the truck next to the cistern. Connect a length of hose to the pump supply, drop the hose into the cistern. The pump will move water until it loses suction pressure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_suction_hose
London Fire Brigade for example has nine special pumps that can draw 2000 gallons a minute each from river or lake supplies. So that's 18,000 gallons a minute just from them.
And that's a smaller fire brigade than Paris.
SFFD trucks have that capability, and it was used in the 1989 earthquake. It's intended for pulling water from the underground cisterns marked by a big ring of bricks in SF intersections.
Terrible for the equipment to run salt water, but they had to.
For anyone else confused: this earthquake was in San Francisco and this is about their Fire Department. It doesn't mean that French fire trucks have that capability 30 years later.
There were notable logistical issues to get enough firefighters on-site given it’s an island, and there were a ton of people around when the fire broke out. They wound up having 400 firefighters on-site until midnight to get it under control and save the structure. I’m pretty confident they did all they could, and HN’s armchair firefighters aren’t likely to have done any better.
(Edit: All these armchair quarterbacks think they know better than the president's team of social media advisers and vetters, they have no idea what goes into that kind of operation and shouldn't question the president based on spur of the moment analysis. You don't think professionals would have already considered all these points before still going forward with the tanker recommendation at the presidential level through the official communication channel?)
Dumping actual water would be a bad idea both for the people and the structure, simply because dumping heavy things from high places is generally dangerous.
Using aerial tankers would be unsafe (flying planes are very low altitudes through a city), and would result in a net reduction in firefighting efforts on scene.
Dropping tons of water on Notre Dame's roof would likely just expedite the collapse.
These planes have to fly extremely close to the ground to deliver their payload (which is spread over an area far too large to be effective in this case anyway btw) and too often the plane can lose control, whether from sudden unweighting or the turbulence from the fire and crash. This can kill everyone on board and usually starts a new fire to boot.
“Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”
-Donald J Trump
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Widely used in Canadian firefighting, mainly forest fires. These fires are huge, covering 1,351,314 hectares in BC alone in 2018[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_British_Columbia_wildfire...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/747_Supertanker
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_firefighting
We also have a form of firefighter called a Smoke Jumper that's the equivalent of a Paratrooper for fighting fires. They're deployed in these remote areas to clear out areas ahead of fires to constrict or redirect fires.
""Truly weird Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky reminds me of a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain. He was terrible at DEBATE!"" & another:
"".@FrankLuntz is a low class slob who came to my office looking for consulting work and I had zero interest. Now he picks anti-Trump panels!"" - who do you think vetted these? Which professionals?
The obvious and sad truth is; Trump watches TV, and randomly reacts real time on twitter with his own words. You can figure out what he is working (and NOT working on) by simply looking at what TV shows, channels, and people-on-TV he refers to as he continues to tweet throughout the day.
"Must act quickly!" Ya think? Hopefully the fire department in Paris, France is listening for gems like that from out here in the boonies / the ghetto hemisphere. How many medieval churches are there on our whole continent? Call us if you want a church bombed.
(edited slightly in response to child comments)
Makes sense. French fire departments are branches of the military.
Edit: just the Parisian and one other fire service are set up this way.
EDIT: I added a few words to the grandparent post to try to make my intent clearer.
However, I'd like to use this opportunity to plug Valee's "Womp Womp". Check it out on Spotify!
Actually I think I was, if anything, charitably conferring tons of undue respect on that guy, by calling him "our president," thereby not only acknowledging his office but accepting him as "ours," both of which are more than some are willing to do. Ya can't please some people I guess.
There are four major phases in the life of a fire, incipient, growth, fully developed, and decay. Sprinklers are designed to keep a fire from progressing from incipient to growth. Once it makes that transition, the battle is lost.
I wonder if injecting large amounts of CO2 or N2 inside the structure would be feasible.
Water-soluble foam, which is much lighter weight and easier to produce in large volumes, is also known to be used to contain large fires, especially of oil / fuel.
https://twitter.com/shivmalik/status/1117864730453061634
First, it's the temperature. A fire is extinguished in the first minutes; after a few hours, you can do nothing but contain it. It's the problem with roof fires: they burn for a long time without being seen, and are therefore powerful when visible.
The aerial tankers are at Nimes. Helicoptors are a little closer, but more in the south. If you use one or the other, it would take several hours.. After the detection of the fire, by which time it has grown in power.
Specific complication today: the discovery was at the end of the afternoon. The planes can't operate in night (experimentation is ongouging), especially in an environment as complex as Paris. Even if we send them, they couldn't intervene until tomorrow.
Second point: access. A roof, it's waterproof. An aerial tanker would douse the tiles or copper cover, but not a drop would arrive on the file except at the stage where the roof has already began to fall. Then, the plane could douse the flames. But it's much, much too late: by the time the first tiles fell, the carpentry would already be gravely weak. In fact, these fires only become visible when the damage is already profound.
Sending the aerial tankers over a building, that's already done. But for exterior fires. Under a roof, that isn't useful until the roof has already fallen. That's why these planes don't service this kind of fire. In fact, at the moment where one can still save the roof, these fires are only accessible by the interior.
That's the difficulty with the work of firefighting. If they could, they would love to intervene without plunging into the flames... But while it burns under a roof, it's necessary to go find the fire.
Correction after several reactions: when I speak of aircraft without precision, I think especially of helicopters. Canadair is clearly excluded by effect of its backwash, which can provoke a collapse of the carpentry, already severely weakened.
Getting 10 engines there wouldn't be the issue. Supplying them with water would be. Given that it's an island, they would be limited to the capacity of the water main serving the island.
> As a rule of thumb, the water flow necessary to extinguish a burning structure is the volume of the structure (in feet) divided by 100. The resulting number is (in rough numbers) the amount of water you need, in gallons per minute. For a fire this size, you're looking at tens of thousands of gallons of water per minute. It's just not possible.
I wonder if the fire could be covered with a huge tarpaulin or alike to try to suppress it.
If you have a large amount of material be moderately hot, you'd need a lot of water to cool it. The thermal load is high.
People also should know that simultaneous fires on multiple floors of multi-story buildings typically aren't possible to fight either, reducing possible efforts to containment and damage mitigation.
1. Cool an outer structure rapidly with lightweight/gently-applied, inert, high specific heat material from above.
2. Thixotropic gently-applied, inert, high specific heat material inner structure (possibly same as 1.).
> Firefighters were rushing to try to contain a fire that has broken out at the cathedral, which police said began accidentally and was linked to building work at the site.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/15/notre-dame-fir...
To the conspiracy minded, facts only prove how deep the conspiracy goes.
That’s what I’m trying to preempt.
Remember the old saying: never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity or incompetence.
What is the relevance to HN, and doesn't the rest of the Internet media, cover this very good on their own?
A sad day for both HN and Notre Dame, in my book :/
Edit: [I won't remove my bad comment, since there are several responses relevant to it, but I would like to apologise, for my typing before thinking (and even before re-reading the policy's I, myself are commenting on) - and lastly for the non-relevant nature, and over dramatisation, of this comment. I see all that I did wrong, and will try to make better choices in the future ;) Sincerely, tirrit.]
Though I would think it was outside the HN posting guidelines.
Guidelines also say that one shouldn't post things that don't add to the conversation, I guess your comment is a classic of not adding anything and that's why you got downvoted.
As for the rest, it's completely crazy. If what we know now is true, the fire was started on the scaffolds (I bet a cigarette), just imagine that the company was supposed to restore the thing, and destroyed it.
Even though -I- have trouble understanding the "hacker" relevance, the people has spoken :) And you are right, my initial comment did not contribute in any relevant way - I can see that in retrospect. For that I truly apologise.
And yes, it would be crazy if it all started, with something like a cigarette or similar.
The up-voters know the relevance. Might have something to do with 900 year old history, surviving every freaking thing possible during that time, only to be burned during the most peaceful and prosperous time ...maybe ever? Victor Hugo? A lot of history has happened there, like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_of_Napoleon_I or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_de_Paris#Events_in_...
However I do not believe that this is the most 'prosperous' time. It is the opposite. Life expectancy is falling in the West. This generation will not live as long as their parents, nor be as wealth, or successful. In places like Russia life expectancy for males is just 66 years (alcohol, suicide, poverty).
Will we look back at this era, a hundred years from now, and see that from the 1980s till now as a slow steady decline, slightly buoyed by the Internet, but with most opportunities squandered.
This seems to be who Newsweek is accusing:
"The pressure is coming from the radical secularists or anti-religion groups as well as feminist activists who tend to target churches as a symbol of the patriarchy that needs to be dismantled,"
> 8 September 2016: Notre Dame Cathedral bombing attempt. Arrests made after an explosives-filled car was discovered parked alongside the cathedral.
> 10 February 2017: Police arrested four people in Montpellier, France, including a 16-year-old girl and a 20-year-old man already known by authorities to have ties to extremist Islamist organizations, on charges of plotting to travel to Paris and attack the cathedral.[37]
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_de_Paris#Events_in_...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html