Fire in Notre Dame

Monday was very normal for me - with a six o'clock wake up, long day at work and getting back home around 7 pm - until H sent me a message that the cathedral of Notre Dame is burning. At first I was not sure if that was true and what kind of a fire, but after a quick googling and reading news and seeing videos, it was a shock. Such a beautiful and historical building and such huge flames all around the roof. I was at home in the Southern boarder of Paris and our windows are also toward South, so we couldn't see even the smoke above the city. We just kept reading news from around the world of what has happened and is still happening...

https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/notre-dame-fire/index.html?fbclid=IwAR1_wLH4jQWYSd64hXHX2kA9RUzzpnvyeaUFuqtBOdeTeJOGIgDfdTmz7cY

Sky News' photo of the fire.

On Tuesday evening I was about to meet H in the center anyway, so we decided to go and see the damage with our own eyes. The train didn't stop at Notre Dame's station so we walked from the previous one. The riverbank was full of people, emergency vehicles, cameras and reporters. The closest bridges to the island in the middle of the river were closed, so we pushed ourselves through the mass and found a way to go down right to the river. The cathedral's stone structures were quite the same as before but all the roof was gone. The scaffolding that had been used in the reconstruction was standing by itself without the support. Later we saw some people walking on the top of Notre Dame with bright flash lights examining what the situation there is now.

Some people had brought flowers along the river.
From the front the cathedral looked like before.

From the side or behind you could see that all the wooden parts were gone
and only the stone was still there.

Here as a comparison photo I took 1,5 weeks ago when the roof was still there.
The biggest visible change is the loss of the high spire.

The news about Notre Dame has shaken the whole world. The French president Emmanuel Macron established fundraising to repair Notre Dame and said that the cathedral would be rebuilt in five years. We will see if that is possible but at least the repair fund has already reached a billion euros within these two days.