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- La flèche de la cathédrale de Rouen en feu (11/7/24)
Image tirée d’une vidéo diffusée par le Huffington Post - See the image in its page
More fear than harm at Rouen cathedral, which today suffered a blaze in its spire. The fire does not appear to have caused any major damage. The cathedral is an all-metal structure, made of cast iron and steel, built by the architect Jean-Antoine Alavoine in 1822 (but only completed some fifty years later) to replace the previous spire, which was destroyed by another fire. According to official statements, the elements that burned were essentially the construction platform and plastic sheeting from the same site.
Because, and this is obviously the essential point to remember about what could have led to a much more serious disaster, as at Notre-Dame, it is once again work on historic monuments that is at stake.
It is intolerable to have to repeat the same thing, disaster after disaster, only to find that the Ministry of Culture has never seen fit to change the laws governing safety on this type of site. Certain lessons have been learned from the Paris cathedral fire in terms of preventive measures (see this article). In Rouen, for example, the dry columns, which allow the fire brigade to quickly bring water to the upper parts of the building, seem to have worked (unlike at Notre-Dame de Paris).
On the other hand, nothing has been done to impose additional constraints on building sites on historic monuments, even though a very high proportion of fires are caused by them. We will not repeat here what we have written on several occasions, in this article or in this one, or in our book on the Notre-Dame fire [1] It is incomprehensible that these common-sense measures have not been taken. How many more monuments will have to be hit by these disasters before the Ministry reacts one day?
These measures have a price. But the cost is much lower than the millions, or even hundreds of millions in the case of Paris cathedral, that fires cost. Not to mention the priceless losses to our heritage.