{"id":6744,"date":"2019-04-15T22:18:40","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T22:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/durbinnepal.com\/en\/?p=6744"},"modified":"2019-04-15T22:18:41","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T22:18:41","slug":"fire-engulfs-paris-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/durbinnepal.com\/en\/2019\/04\/15\/fire-engulfs-paris-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire engulfs Paris church"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paris, April 15: Crowds of stunned Parisians and tourists — some crying, others offering prayers — watched in horror in central Paris on Monday night as firefighters struggled for hours to extinguish the flames engulfing the Notre-Dame Cathedral.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Flames ravaging the roof illuminated the outline of the monument’s two square towers in a fiery glow, and were reflected in the waters of the Seine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Along the Pont au Change bridge, which connects the Ile de la Cite with the Right Bank, the atmosphere was one of a vigil as hundreds of people watched in hushed silence as smoke rose into the night sky.<\/p>\n

Many were quietly singing an Ave Maria in Latin, including Stephane Seigneurie, 52, who said he has lived in Paris for the past 25 years.<\/p>\n

“I come often, and go in even where there’s no mass because it’s an extraordinary place, entwined in the history of France,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Politically, intellectually and spiritually, it’s a symbol of France.”<\/p>\n

When Seigneurie says that he’s very sad, an elegant woman with dark bobbed hair who is crying whispers to him, “We have to pray.”<\/p>\n

Jeanne Duffy, 62, had travelled from New York to Paris with her twin daughters to see her nephew run the Paris marathon on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The girls had wanted to climb the church’s towers Monday evening but at the last minute the three decided to go to Disneyland Paris instead.<\/p>\n

“We were heartbroken because as New Yorkers we’ve been through this,” Duffy said, referring to the September 11, 2001 attacks which destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center.<\/p>\n

“In terms of heritage this is much worse. This is a world treasure. Everyone knows Notre-Dame,” she said.<\/p>\n

Gasps and cries of “Oh my god” erupted at 7:50 pm (1750 GMT) when the top portion of the church’s spire came crashing down into an inferno that had spread to the entire roof.<\/p>\n

More gasps came a few seconds later when the rest of the spire collapsed, caught on the cameras of thousands of mobile phones.<\/p>\n

“Paris is disfigured. The city will never be like it was before,” said Philippe, a communications worker in his mid-30s, who had biked over after being alerted of the fire by a friend.<\/p>\n

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“I’m a Parisian, my father was a Parisian, my grandfather as well — this was something we brought our sons to see,” he said. “I won’t be showing this to my son.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

“It’s a tragedy,” he added. “If you pray, now is the time to pray.”<\/p>\n

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Police cleared pedestrians away from the two islands in the river Seine, including the Ile de la Cite which houses the soaring Gothic church, one of Europe’s best-known landmarks.<\/p>\n

But throngs of onlookers remained behind police cordons on the stone bridges leading to the islands and along the banks of the Seine river as darkness fell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

“It’s finished, we’ll never be able to see it again,” said Jerome Fautrey, a 37-year-old who had come to watch.<\/p>\n

“It’s incredible, our history is going up in smoke,” said Benoit, 42, who arrived on the scene by bike. (AFP)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paris, April 15: Crowds of stunned Parisians and tourists — some crying, others offering prayers — watched in horror in central Paris on Monday night as firefighters struggled for hours to extinguish the flames engulfing the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Flames ravaging the roof illuminated the outline of the monument’s two square towers in a fiery glow, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,44,1,51,35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/durbinnepal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6744"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/durbinnepal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/durbinnepal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/durbinnepal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/durbinnepal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/durbinnepal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6745,"href":"https:\/\/durbinnepal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6744\/revisions\/6745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/durbinnepal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/durbinnepal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/durbinnepal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}