Rouen Cathedral fire brought under control in Normandy | France

Firefighters within the Normandy metropolis of Rouen have managed to extinguish a hearth in its world-famous gothic cathedral, calming fears of one other catastrophe at one in every of France’s architectural jewels 5 years after the devastation of Notre Dame. Native fireplace providers mentioned no main injury was reported.

A bit of plastic sheeting protecting renovation work 120 metres (400 ft) up the cathedral’s spire caught fireplace, although officers haven’t mentioned how the blaze began.

Employees on the website first tried to place out the fireplace after which alerted the departmental fireplace service, who raised the alarm round noon native time. Some 40 autos and 70 firefighters responded to the scene.

The town’s mayor shared a photograph of a column of smoke rising from the Gothic landmark.

The fireplace was shortly introduced “beneath management”, mentioned native fireplace chief Stephane Gouezec, and was declared extinguished at about 5pm native time.

“The inside was saved, above all of the artistic endeavors,” mentioned Tradition Minister Rachida Dati, who visited the scene on the request of President Emmanuel Macron.

Some 28 items had been eliminated preventively, the native prefecture mentioned.

Three staff on website suffered from gentle smoke inhalation once they tried to place out the fireplace with extinguishers, in line with native authorities.

“Fireplace broke out on the tip of the spire, which isn’t product of wooden, however moderately metallic,” the prefecture of the Seine-Maritime division informed AFP.

Renovations in Rouen have been ongoing since 2017, in line with Normandy’s tradition authority and the spire had been surrounded by scaffolding and a white cowl for a number of weeks.

A number of the renovation work concerned creating firewalls inside the picket construction to forestall it struggling the identical destiny as Notre Dame, in addition to reinforcing the roofing vaults.

A fireplace within the picket body of the roof was behind the large 2019 injury to the world-famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the place repairs are solely now nearing completion.

Fireplace additionally engulfed Copenhagen’s Outdated Inventory Trade, one of many Danish capital’s most historic landmarks, in April, toppling its spire. Massive components of the outer partitions additionally later collapsed.

Rouen’s cathedral, constructed on the location of a fourth-century basilica and an Eleventh-century Romanesque advanced, is the result of development initiatives that began within the twelfth century.

It grew to become particularly well-known on account of a collection of work by the French impressionist Claude Monet, who captured the cathedral’s look at completely different occasions of day. The collection was painted partially from a studio throughout the road from the cathedral.

“So long as the solar is on it, there can be as some ways of being Rouen Cathedral as man could make divisions in time,” Monet wrote.

Its reconstruction was undertaken by architect Jean-Antoine Alavoine, who additionally designed the column within the Place de la Bastille in Paris. Alavoine determined to construct the spire in Rouen with forged iron. The concept of an iron spire was controversial; the novelist Gustave Flaubert denounced it as “the dream of a metalworker in a delirium”.

At 151 metres, the forged iron spire is the best church spire in France. For a quick time, the cathedral was the world’s tallest constructing.

The cathedral was broken within the second world warfare, and a turret fell throughout a storm in 1999.

Reuters, Agence-France Presse and Related Press contributed to this report