Major fire damages famed Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, France

The Notre-Dame Cathedral burns. Reuters. 

One of the most famous and important churches in the world, the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, had been gutted by a massive fire. Reuters. The roof of the cathedral has been destroyed but the famed bell tower and walls have been saved. The fire burned for 8 hours and one fireman was injured in the incident. Emergency responders rushed to rescue as many priceless artifacts as possible. France's President, the embattled Emmanuel Macron, said France would rebuild the cathedral and asked for assistance from the world. So far it is unclear what caused the fire but French officials do not believe it is arson or terrorism at this time. 

Watch the moment spire of #NotreDame cathedral collapses due to firehttps://t.co/3mWYOkKYTx pic.twitter.com/m9sS1EvrwO

— RT (@RT_com) April 16, 2019

My Comment:
What a disaster for France, which is a country that has been through a lot lately. They have had many major terror attacks and their government is very politically unstable. The last thing they needed is to see one of their greatest political, religious and emotional symbols of the country burned to the ground. This is a huge disaster for them.

If there is hope that can come from this it might be that this disaster will help bring the country together. There is a huge split right now between the upper classes and their migrant servant class and the lower and middle class people of France. They have had months of protests from the Gilets Jaunes/Yellow Jackets movement and Emmanuel Macron is one of the least popular leaders in Europe. Perhaps this disaster will bring the French together in mourning.

I'm not confident that the Cathedral can be restored to it's former glory. It is an ancient building and many of the skills, techniques and even knowledge of how to build such a structure has been lost to time. There aren't people that know how to fix this building and it will take some of the best minds in the field a lot of time and money to figure out how to fix the Cathedral.

There has been a lot of discussion on social media on what might have caused this. Many people have pointed out that there have been many cases of vandalism, terrorism and other kinds of attacks on Catholic Churches by radical Muslims. Others are blaming the Gilets Jaunes movement, though why they would attack Notre-Dame is beyond me.

Right now there isn't any proof that this was deliberate in any way. There are plenty of people that would want to do this, but so far I haven't seen anything that proves that this was an attack. From what I understand the Cathedral was undergoing renovations and there are dozens of ways for it to start on fire, so there is no reason why it couldn't have been a tragic accident and for now, that's what I think happened. But if evidence is found that this was a deliberate attack, there will be hell to pay.

I've always wanted to visit Europe and while France wouldn't have been my first choice, if I was going there I would have stopped by this Cathedral. It's unfortunate that I probably won't have the chance to see it in it's full glory now.