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A baffling alert. A race to the wrong building. Notre-Dame still stands only because firefighters decided to risk everything, a New York Times reconstruction has found.
July 17, 2019

PARIS — The employee monitoring the smoke alarm panel at Notre-Dame cathedral was just three days on the job when the red warning light flashed on the evening of April 15: “Feu.” Fire.

It was 6:18 on a Monday, the week before Easter. The Rev. Jean-Pierre Caveau was celebrating Mass before hundreds of worshipers and visitors, and the employee radioed a church guard who was standing just a few feet from the altar.

Go check for fire, the guard was told. He did and found nothing.

It took nearly 30 minutes before they realized their mistake: The guard had gone to the wrong building. The fire was in the attic of the cathedral, the famed latticework of ancient timbers known as “the forest.”

The miscommunication, uncovered in interviews with church officials and managers of the fire security company, Elytis, has set off a bitter round of finger-pointing over who was responsible for allowing the fire to rage unchecked for so long. Who is to blame and how the fire started have not yet been determined and are at the heart of an investigation by the French authorities that will continue for months.

But the damage is done. What happened over four hours that night changed Paris. The cathedral — a soaring medieval structure that has captured the hearts of believer and nonbeliever alike for 850 years — was ravaged.

Today three jagged openings mar Notre-Dame’s vaulted ceiling, the stone of the structure is precarious, and the roof is gone. Some 150 workers remain busy recovering the stones, shoring up the building, and protecting it from the elements with two giant tarps.

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physically check for fire, before anything was done.