A Case for Maigret: What Was the Origin of the Notre-Dame de Paris Fire?

Catholic World Report ^ | 9/21/19 | Chilton Williamson, Jr.

[marshmallow]

The French government seems to have been suspiciously quick, perhaps eager, to deny the possibility that a crime of arson was responsible for the near loss of Notre-Dame de Paris.

Twenty-four hours after the blaze at Notre-Dame last April 15 was brought under control, the cause of the fire was officially announced by the Élysée. In the professed view of the French government, the disaster could only have been an accident. The possibility of a deliberate attack upon the cathedral was dismissed.

Nicholas Dupont-Aignan, President of Debout la France, was skeptical from the start. The government’s certainty, he suggested, did not appear to agree with its warning that the inquest into the fire’s origin would be long and difficult. Four months later, as reported in a three-part feature printed in Valeurs Actuelles (22 August 2019), Dupont-Aignan was persisting in his skepticism in the face of condemnation by the political class. “I have informed myself of the business, I have discussed it with the connaisseurs of Notre-Dame: it would require a sequence of exceptional circumstances to set fire to such a frame [as Notre Dame’s]. I do not say that an accident is impossible, but I claim the right to investigate.”

Dupont-Aignan’s skepticism is supported by the fact that on April 25 the brigade criminelle was granted access to the scene to investigate the cathedral. As Valeurs notes, the famous brigade is generally employed in cases involving homicides, kidnappings for ransom, and so on—personal crimes of the sort Georges Simenon’s Jules Maigret was charged with solving. Why then was it brought in to handle a case involving the accidental near-destruction of Notre-Dame?

The firefighters affirm as one man that the fire destroyed, among so many other things, every trace of its causation. Their testimony allowed the Procurator of France to reaffirm the.......

[MD Expat in PA]

Have any Islamist groups claimed responsibility? Perhaps there were but I’ve not heard of any. Terrorists like to advertise their handy work, they even sometimes claim responsibility for that which they didn’t do, even fight among themselves over which terrorist group can claim credit.

Seriously, not every fire or explosion is caused by Muslim extremists and when it is terrorism, they like to make it known. That’s not to say that it couldn’t have been or that they didn’t celebrate the destruction but the likely cause is something else.

Notre Dame Cathedral was undergoing major renovations, some of which were to repair the very shoddy attempts at renovation in the 19th century. Many architects and historians had been concerned for years about the sad state of the building and of the poor attempts at stemming the decay.

Old buildings are susceptible to fires during renovations, especially where electrical work is being done or by careless workers - in April, a spokesman for scaffolding company Le Bras Freres which had been involved in restoration work at Notre Dame admitted that workers had smoked on the site from time to time. The company later tried to retract that statement for obvious reasons.

While it may seem a cover up to say it was not arson, absent any evidence that it was, it would be equally irresponsible to say it without a doubt that it was arson. The difficult part of determining a definitive cause is that the fire itself often destroys evidence of its cause.

Here where I live in York PA, in March 2018 there was a fire at a 150-year-old former organ and piano factory and later warehouse that was being converted into upscale apartments. Two firefighters were killed in a partial collapse while putting out hotspots the morning after the fire. While the cause is still undetermined, it is believed the cause of the fire was faulty electrical wires, either old wires still “hot” or new wiring or even from contractor equipment. The fire quickly got out of control consuming the entire building because while there was a sprinkler system, it was not operational during the renovations and the 150-year-old building still had many of its original wood flooring, some of which had dry rotted and collapsed in spots during the renovation work and had most of its original wood beams throughout.

https://fox43.com/2018/03/30/atf-officials-cause-

And as of June of this year, the investigation into the Notre Dame fire is on-going.

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3016234/devastating-notre-dame-cathedral-fire-could-have-been-started

In 1984 a fire nearly destroyed the York Minster Cathedral. The fire was believed to have been caused by lightning striking a metal electrical box inside the roof.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-28112373

Like Notre Dame, York Minster’s vaulted ceiling was constructed with wood timbers, many of them original at the time of the fire. Very old wood, a vaulted ceiling acting like a chimney, electric wires sparking - a recipe for disaster.

Notre Dame and York Minster were not the first or only great cathedrals to have suffered devastating fires. Some were destroyed by city wide fires such as the original St Paul’s Cathedral, London destroyed in the 1666 Great Fire of London (although it had been damaged by fire twice earlier), some by lightning strikes, one was known to have been caused by candles lit for its consecration, some by bombings during WWI or WWII and some by accidents of undetermined cause.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires_at_major_places_of_worship