• Notre-Dame. Witness to the magical Paris

The delicate dismantling operation of the 200-ton scaffold, severely damaged in the Notre-Dame de Paris fire, started today and is expected to last all summer. Operators must carefully remove the pieces of the scaffolding without the entire structure collapsing, thus preventing the walls of the Gothic cathedral from collapsing, whose structure was also severely damaged in the accident.

The flames devoured the cathedral's roof on April 15, 2019, the spire that crowned the building collapsed and part of the vault was destroyed in the fire. But the walls of Notre-Dame and the scaffolding remained standing and the rose windows and relics of the cathedral were saved .

The scaffolding had been placed before the accident to restore the arrow of the cathedral that crowned the building and which was built by the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century . The scaffolding had been mounted from wall to wall and did not rest on the wooden ceiling or on the spire of the cathedral, so during the fire a domino effect was prevented and it remained standing.

The metal structure resisted the collapse of the needle, but the flames deformed it . The scaffolding, which weighs 200 tons, is made up of 40,000 pieces, half of which are located more than 40 meters high. The fire welded the pieces together, so they cannot be disassembled as they normally would be. To remove the scaffold, the pieces must be cut and removed one by one.

"This unprecedented and complex operation has been painstakingly prepared," explains the public body responsible for the conservation and restoration of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral in a press release.

In recent months, the burned scaffolding has been consolidated and metal beams have been placed on three levels to stabilize it and thus avoid any risk of collapse. A second scaffolding , higher than the old one, and a walkway were also installed to facilitate the dismantling work. And protection nets have been placed on three levels to stop the fall of the pipes or workers during the operation.

Two teams of five workers will take turns roping down to the calcined parts of the scaffold and using metal saws to cut through the tubes that melted together during the fire. These pieces will be removed thanks to an 80-meter-high crane that was mounted next to the cathedral last December. The most accessible parts of the structure will be dismantled by scaffolding assembly and disassembly specialists.

The rector of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, Patrick Chauvet, explained that the great difficulty at the moment in the works of the cathedral is the dismantling of the burned scaffolding. "When it is finished, we can say that the cathedral is saved 100 per cent, "Monsignor Chauvet told the French press in mid-April.

The Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral has been closed to the public from the day of the fire and will remain so for the duration of the restoration work. On May 31 the cathedral square, which had been surrounded by fences since the incident, was opened to the public.

In this last year, only two masses have been celebrated behind closed doors and without faithfuls inside the cathedral. The last mass that was celebrated was that of Good Friday in April in full confinement due to the covid-19 pandemic.

Until now the works of Notre-Dame have suffered continuous delays. They were paralyzed on several occasions due to the risks of exposing workers to lead, due to strikes, bad weather and the confinement of the population due to the coronavirus epidemic.

French President Emmanuel Macron has set himself the ambitious goal of restoring Notre-Dame in five years, just in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

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