Nearly three months after a fire gutted Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, the building’s chief architect has warned that there is still a risk that the historic building’s ceiling arches might yet collapse, causing severe structural damage.
“The risk is that all the vaults up there fall. It is that simple,” says Philippe Villeneuve, chief architect of Notre-Dame, who led TIME on a tour of the fire-ravaged cathedral. “For the moment we do not know because no one has gone to see them, because you cannot go and see them.”
The man responsible for overseeing the reconstruction of Notre-Dame says the risks of a catastrophic collapse are small but that the true extent of the damage will not be known until at least the end of the year. Until then, it will remain a triage site.
Those assessing Notre-Dame’s damage are working to a tight deadline: President Emmanuel Macron has declared that the building should be rebuilt within five years. But Villeneuve says there remain some deeply worrying unknowns about what state Notre-Dame is in, especially as the building’s interior is now open to the elements. “We do not know if there are fissures or fractures,” he says.
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