The accidental track is preferred, but the criminal track or that of the recklessness of a smoker or a worker cannot be completely ruled out, according to the investigators.
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Three years after the Notre-Dame fire, investigators are still trying to determine the cause of this gigantic disaster which partially devastated the Gothic cathedral, in the center of Paris.
In June 2019, at the end of the preliminary investigation, the Paris prosecutor, Rémy Heitz, indicated that he favored the accidental track, evoking a poorly extinguished cigarette butt or an electrical malfunction, nothing seeming to accredit the criminal track. Two of the five expert reports ordered by the investigating magistrates have to date given rise to the filing of a final report, learned France Télévisions from a judicial source. The other appraisal operations have not been completed.
“The hypothesis of a voluntary human intervention or an electrical malfunction, if they are not privileged, cannot be completely ruled out with certainty at this stage”according to this source. “Those of the recklessness of a smoker or of a site recklessness by using a spark-generating tool in particular also remain under study.”
On the other hand, it appears from the investigations already carried out that the fire starting zone is indeed “the one initially identified during the preliminary investigation and has been refined as being the sandpit of the gutter wall of the choir at the south-east corner of the crossing of the transept”; according to the same source, either a wooden element of the frame. New assessments of the rubble have been launched and should last several more months.