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Six months later, the causes that caused the Notre-Dame fire are still unknown. But the chronology of events is precisely timed by, among others, by Le Monde and The New York Times , which make it clear that the initial response was disastrous .

The Parisian cathedral was the only one in France with a security checkpoint. I was in the presbytery, a little house next to the cathedral on the side of the Seine. It was the guard's house. In 2014, the company Elytis installed its fire safety system there.

Two employees should share a shift: the boss watches the panel; the other makes rounds and is in the place indicated by the alarms in less than five minutes. But the cuts have left the service in one employee per shift.

Monday, April 15. An identified MD employee has entered work at 7.30 and must finish at 15:30. But the relay does not appear and splices the second turn that lasts until 23 . At 18:18 hours the red fire light on the control panel lights up. The screen reads "loft ship / sacristy" and a code: ZDA-110-3-15-1. Notify the guard on duty, Jean Paul B, an expoliation that has been in the cathedral for five years. In a minute, check that in the sacristy, a building adjacent to the cathedral, everything is in order.

At 18:23, as it is unknown what triggered the alert, the speakers broadcast the eviction order. About 800 people leave in order of the temple . They are mostly tourists but there are also faithful. The officiant, Jean Pierre Caveau, stays by the altar.

The guardian of the cathedral, Joachim, who was once sacristan, joins Jean Paul in an exhaustive record of the sacristy. Before, when passing through the checkpoint, he has told the rookie to call his boss, Emmanuel P., to find out what the code means.

At 18:43 the answer comes. The code corresponds to one of the 160 smoke detectors of the complex alarm system, located in the attic of the cathedral, not in the sacristy .

At 18:45 when the alarm sounds a second time. The faithful who had returned to the temple (but not tourists) are evicted.

Three doors and 300 steps separate the guard and the rector (who was waiting for the end of the mass for a concert rehearsal) from the forest of beams that support the roof. Each one comes from a different tree. They cover a space of more than 100 meters long by 13 wide in the nave (40 in the transept) and 10 high. When you open the last door, the flames are impressive .

At 18:48 the security officer calls the fire department. Half an hour has passed since the first alarm signal. «I think Notre Dame burns» reads on Twitter at 18:52.

Around 19:00 the first fire trucks arrive at the esplanade. Notre Dame is already a tea driven by the wind that comes from the east.

General Jean Claude Gallet, head of the Paris brigade, will have 600 fire soldiers at his command (in France, firefighters are a military body). He is the one who makes the decision to let the roof burn and concentrate on saving the towers, started in the north.

9:30 p.m. Macron arrives and addresses the nation on television from in front of the cathedral. Two ships pump water from the Seine to the trucks that throw it at 4,000 liters per minute with the help of 13 lifting arms. The strategy of firefighters works. The fire is considered controlled at 23:00. But it will take seven hours to extinguish it completely.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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