Recklessness? Voluntary act? Three years later, investigators are still wondering about the fire of an unprecedented scale which destroyed Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral on April 15, 2019. At the end of the day, that Monday, thick smoke escapes from the roof of the monument, in front of a crowd of amazed onlookers. “Around 7 p.m., I received an alert. We quickly left the editorial office on two motorcycles, with my colleague Guillaume Michel on camera”, remember Anne-Claire Poignard, journalist for France 2.
She is one of the first special correspondents on the spot that evening. “We arrived at Place Saint-Michel, 400 meters from Notre-Dame. I then see the two belfries with gigantic flames rising behindrecalls the journalist. We can smell the fire, but there are also incandescent pieces falling on our heads.” Anne-Claire Poignard recounts the scene in duplex the same evening, in the 8 p.m. newspaper of France 2. “You see behind me the flames escaping from the frame, the situation is very tense here”, she describes to presenter Anne-Sophie Lapix.
The situation is confused, no one knows the origin of the fire. The security forces establish a security perimeter and try to contain the crowd which gathers in front of the emblematic monument on fire. “What strikes me at that moment is the astonishment of the witnesses, the emotion. Some are filming with their cell phones, others are praying. They live the drama live.”
The firefighters reach the end of the blaze in the night, after nine hours of struggle. In the aftermath of the disaster, the cathedral is still standing, but unrecognizable. Its stained glass windows are black, its “forest” (the framework of the roof) has gone up in smoke, its famous spire has collapsed.
“Very quickly after covering the evening, we naturally wanted to question the firefighters who arrived first on the spot”, says Anne-Claire Poignard. The journalist then met Master Corporal Myriam Chudzinski, in her barracks located not far from the cathedral. ”It was my first fire! Seeing the roof completely ablaze, we understood that the situation was dramatic”, says the 27-year-old Paris firefighter. Myriam Chudzinski then describes the stifling heat, the difficulty of accessing the hearth of the fire. “Were you scared ?” asks Anne-Claire Poignard. “No, not at the moment.”
“These testimonies show the scene from the inside. These firefighters were confronted with danger, with the heat… Myriam’s testimony marked me. Making its first fire at Notre-Dame de Paris, a masterpiece Gothic art, it’s not nothing!” concludes the journalist from France 2.