Rebuilding Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral

the world certainly watched in horror nearly two years ago as the famed notre dame nearly 1 000 years old burned but despite the pandemic the restoration work has continued and our james longman has an exclusive look at the resurrection of this famous cathedral nearly two years ago the world watched in horror as an emblem of french national pride and identity notre dame burned as night fell on april 15 2019 the nightmare reached its climax that famous spire crumbling into the ancient cathedral the structure fragile and despite a pandemic that shut down life as we know it the work on rehabilitating this extraordinary place continued today this historic treasure is slowly pulling through and we went and saw first hand very we're saying that if you walk past it you wouldn't know there was anything wrong because the facade still looks as incredible as ever inside the nearly thousand-year-old cathedral it's a different story we head up to the roof where the destruction began we're about 40 meters up here the fire was started up here by an electrical fault high up in the vaulted ceiling and this is what it did and where that famous spire fell this is the most obvious damage to notre dame de paris the enormous hull that remains in the roof of the building take a look you can see the charred ends of what was once the oak vault that kept this part of the roof in place and it was those 200 tons of lead melting down on top of the roof here the lead that once lined this roof that caused this part of the roof to collapse there are now anywhere between 150 to 200 people working on nothing at any one time slowed down of course by the pandemic here workers dig for remains on the roof all the old wood stone and metal has to be taken out and analyzed before they rebuild precious fragments handed over to archaeologists will see if there's anything they can salvage whatever can't be used in the restoration will be preserved to study the nearly 1 000 year old structure back on the ground debris is collected and brought into tents in this one restorators have collected the lead-filled beams that fell as notre dame burned it's a huge operation and we're actually not even allowed into this part because they're so worried about lead inhalation you need a specialized mask in order to go in in another site shelves lined with stones so these are all the stones that were found on the floor of notre dame that fell during the fire each one is meticulously placed in order to recreate the part of the structure that no longer stands i asked the archaeologist what answers she hopes to find among the debris she says there's much to discover and the difficulties come on it you think a building like this is really well known but actually it's such an important building that no one dared touch it the challenge determining if these stones are structurally sound to be used in the restoration next door a gargantuan task at hand so you can see these stones look completely different and that's because they've been cleaned and prepared and placed over here prepared to be placed over here to recreate one of the arches from notre dame hopefully one day to then go back into the building they're using a model from american art historian andrew tallon he was the last person to properly map the vaulted ceilings of this part of notre dame in 2010 because the originals are lost his plans are the only ones that teams here can go by so how much is all this going to cost and how long will it take the deputy of operations at notre dame was a little shy but it's clear this is an unprecedented project and the level of expertise and sheer number of skilled craftspeople it requires is staggering the palette we've gathered hundreds of stones from the first few days thanks to the scientific community who mobilized the day right after the fire scientists architects archaeologists they all volunteered to rehabilitate the structure the one thing that's clear everyone here is working not just to restore a building but to rebuild history and france is waiting james longman in paris for abc news live quite a task there thanks to james for that inside look hi everyone george stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the abc news youtube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel and don't forget to download the abc news app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching

Channel: ABC News

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Keywords: notre-dame, cathedral, historic, site, restorators, fire, restoration, rebuilding, paris, france, abcnl, prime, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-75935166

Id: 1P5JDfelKPc

Length: 5min 0sec (300 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 16 2021