Notre-Dame, like many other catastrophic accidents of our era, is one of the consequences of the austerity measures and the neglect of social and cultural aspects of society; imposed by the ruling classes.
Apparently the renovation of the cathedral sought by its officials in 2017, required much more the amount of money granted by the government of France; i.e. 100 million Euro VS. only 2 million Euro per-year; forcing the church officials to make an international appeal to the charities and donors.
According to the experts on building restoration and safety, the restoration of old buildings requires
24-hour fire watch should there be any heat-source activities going on; as any breakages will need 'immediate' attention.
Edward Lewis from the University of South Florida has noted that:
"Catastrophic fires are typically bound up with cost-cutting on fire safety staffing levels. In my experience, it starts with human error, which stems from inadequate supervision levels and disregard for fire prevention procedures… On a lot of construction jobs, the ratio between supervisors and workers isn’t adequate." Accounts of the fire show that this is what occurred at Notre-Dame: After a first fire alarm sounded in the roof area at 6:20 p.m. on Monday,
well after construction workers had gone home, church staff hurriedly checked the vast maze of crisscrossing 13th to 19th century timber holding up the roof. They did not find the fire. At 6:45 p.m., a new fire alarm sounded. This time, within minutes, the extremely old, dry and flammable timber was blazing out of control...
As there have been discussions on this thread about 'contributing' money towards the re-building of the Cathedral; it's worth mentioning that the French Billionaire
Bernard Arnold, who has offered a 200 million Euro contribution for this project, gained over 22 Billions last year as the result of Macron's new tax-cut policy for the 'rich'.
Now, shouldn't one wonder what kind of system of society allows such amounts of money to be owned by a handful of individuals; whilst millions each year in various parts of the same planet as they live on; suffer from malnutrition, poverty, starvation, homelessness, war, involuntary immigration, and so forth..?
Which fundamental economic - political phenomena, contribute to the creation and sustenance of such gaps, and such devastating issues?
Should Capitalism live on..?
There are some good articles related to this topic. Two of which I've attached here:
The burning of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris Notre-Dame des Flambeauxhttps://anticapital0.wordpress.com/ash-monday/