Even if she did not see it with her eyes, Anne Hidalgo is not about to forget the moment when, shortly before 8 p.m. on April 15, 2019, the arrow of Viollet le Duc collapsed in the blaze . “With Mgr Patrick Chauvet, rector of Notre-Dame, we made a press point, back turned to the cathedral, facing the photographers. And suddenly I heard the very thud of the falling arrow, ”she remembers.
The next day, the mayor of Paris announced that the City would grant a contribution of 50 million euros to the restoration of this “extraordinary religious building, symbol of our city and our country, which is part of our common heritage, if only by the work of Victor Hugo ”.
To commemorate this sad anniversary, a musical performance around Notre-Dame de Paris, canceled due to confinement, was to be given this evening on the forecourt of the Town Hall.
“On the one hand, there is a vacuum. On the other, there is fire ”
Arriving in the square in front of the cathedral around 7 p.m., Anne Hidalgo who had seen the smoke from her City Hall office, will spend a good part of the night there "with a lot of back and forth between the command post on the forecourt and the police headquarters ".
From this "tragic night", she remembers the "moment when General Jean-Claude Gallet, firefighter commander, presented to the President of the Republic the plan to prevent the fire from spreading in the towers, which supposed the rise at the front of 50 firefighters who accepted, at the risk of their lives, this sacrifice made individually and collectively ”. And the mayor to continue: “Very quickly we saw them deploy and climb, small lights in the night. I still hear General Gallet say: On the one hand, there is a void. On the other, there is fire… ”
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