The Fire at Notre Dame

Unlike so many of those who have spoken and written about the fire at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, I've never been there in person, but in a vicarious way I have, just like so many people who haven't been there have vicariously seen and felt the place through movies, teevee, picture books and so on. Notre Dame is in some ways more familiar to Americans than just about any other Medieval church on earth. Certainly more so -- perhaps oddly -- than the many Gothic piles that dot the British Isles. Hm. Wonder why that is so?

Of course the spectacular setting on the Ile de la Cité in the middle of the Seine increases the visual impact of the church and its flying buttresses. It's a photographic and artistic wonder, especially as the light plays on the exterior stonework.

Until the photos and videos emerged following the fire, I don't think I had ever seen pictures of the interior of the cathedral, and from what I've seen so far, there was nothing particularly special about it -- compared to other Medieval cathedrals throughout Europe, or even their imitations in the United States. What I had seen and remembered were photos of the magnificent stained glass windows that line the walls and punctuate the ends of the cross. Amazing in every way, meant to delight the senses, windows which for the most part they say have been there "forever." They are said to be mostly original from the 1300s or a bit earlier or later, some damaged over the years of catastrophes, wars and revolutions, but never destroyed, and even with the fire, most of the windows appear to have survived intact. As I say, amazing.

The 850 year old oak raftering burned, the lead roofing melted or vaporized (that must not be pleasant) and the 150 year old spire collapsed in a flaming heap, puncturing the vaulting and forming a blazing pile of primarily wooden debris on the floor of the cathedral in front of the altar. That burning heap of rubble was doused with streams of water and fairly promptly put out while the roofing kept burning. Other parts of the vaulting collapsed or were punctured, but they say the damage, while significant, is repairable. As I'm sure it is. Medieval churches and cathedrals throughout Europe have been bombarded, reduced to rubble in many cases, gone up in flames and been shaken to pieces in earthquakes. Their devastation and restoration is almost routine. So there is little doubt that Notre Dame will be restored, and Macron has set a goal of completing the restoration in five years. To me that's unlikely, but the work will be done no matter how long it takes.

The fire was truly shocking, however, a visceral shock felt throughout the European and European-descent world. At first, it seemed like the entire structure was aflame and that nothing would survive. Gradually, it was realized that the fire was mostly confined to the roof and the spire, and that the stone building mostly survived though badly damaged. Some of the closeup views during the fire and its aftermath showed very deteriorated stonework though. Parts of the building were undergoing restoration, but much of the exterior looked like it was overdue. The fire appears to have started at the base of the spire where restoration work was underway. It has been tentatively deemed an accidental fire. Roof fires are not uncommon during restoration work on Medieval buildings and that seems to be what happened here.

It's a shame and yet after the initial shock it seems that Parisians -- and just about everyone else -- has moved on, confident that the monument will be restored, and the fire will eventually be forgotten.

I haven't mentioned the many billionaires who suddenly came up with hundreds of millions of euros for the restoration but were unable it seems to help fund the renovations that were underway when the roof caught fire. Nor, it seems, have they ever been able to find a way to help alleviate the growing problems of homelessness in France and elsewhere. It's one of the Great Mysteries, isn't it? How is it they can collectively come up with more than a billion dollars practically overnight to fund the restoration of Notre Dame after the fire but could barely find a penny to help before? Mystery!

And I couldn't help but think about the shock people must have felt long ago as one by one and sometimes in batches ancient Roman monuments fell to ruin from fire, earthquake, wars and revolutions. Only they weren't rebuilt. And I think of all the cities in the United States left partially abandoned by changing economic priorities, entire sections left to rot and ruin. The fire at Notre Dame isn't quite in that category, but it is evocative of a kind of creeping doom nonetheless.

And yet, life goes on...

Still Trying to Do Amateur Forensics on the Odessa Massacre

This is the most complete video I've so far seen of the interior of the Trade Union House in Odessa where so many were killed on May 2.



Video streaming by Ustream

I confess, I haven't seen it all yet, as I've been juggling a whole bunch of other stuff, including an injured cat. But what I have seen confirms some of my previous suspicions.

Most of the building was not burned at all. The deadly fire was in the entrance lobby and the rear stairwell with which the lobby connects. From the indications in this and other videos of the interior after the flames were put out, and from testimony of survivors I've read, once the Anti-Maidan activists gained entrance to the building on May 2 -- whether they broke in or were let in to the entrance lobby remains to be determined -- they erected a makeshift barricade from materials at hand. The remains of that barricade are still visible in the video above. Those remains are mostly metal, and exactly what was in the barricade is hard to determine from the ashes, scraps and twisted bars that could be seen when the video was shot on May 4. It appears from the burnt debris of the barricade that it was fairly substantial.

Based on what's in other videos I've seen, it appears that the fire started in the lobby, probably in the barricade itself, after several Molotov cocktails were hurled through the entrance doors. One of the doors appeared to be open as the flames consumed whatever was inside, and they all seemed to have glass panels, which could have been broken by the mob outside. Consequently, the doors didn't provide any substantial protection.

There are now a number of videos posted which show the nearly free access Right Sektor thugs had to the building both before and after the fire started. They were able to break in at the side entrances, and dozens of them were roaming the place seeking out and murdering victims all through the time that
Anti-Maidan activists were attempting to shelter inside. This is of interest in part because they were inside the building as the fire in the entrance lobby suddenly and spectacularly raced up the stairwell, killing what appeared to be more than a dozen people almost instantly.

Visible in the early videos of the charred bodies on the steps are makeshift barricades that those on the steps appeared to have erected to prevent people from coming down the steps. This suggests to me that there were Right Sektor thugs roaming the upper floors before the fire started, and there are videos of people in the windows of the upper floors waving the Ukrainian flag -- to loud and raucous cheers below -- as the fire was burning and people were trying to get out of the windows of offices at the front of the building.

This link is to quite a long video that shows efforts of people to escape the building by climbing out front windows. It also shows efforts at rescue made by members of the crowd prior to the arrival of the fire brigade hoses and ladders. At one point, a man in a red jacket or sweatshirt is seen hurling a Molotov cocktail at the building, apparently aiming for some of those trying to escape. He is admonished by another man in the crowd, and he seems disappointed that his efforts were not appreciated. He appears later to hurl invective (one assumes) at those trying to escape the building. There is also a portion of the video where someone appears in a top floor window waving a Ukrainian flag to the lusty chants of "U-krai-na!" from the crowd below, as terrified people stand or crouch in the windows.

Once the fire brigade arrives, they are able to put the fire in the lobby out within a very short time.

Numerous videos show Right Sektor access to the building.

Here are a few links:

 http://youtu.be/lkqfL8gf1Qg

http://youtu.be/5Z8WzYegg5o

 http://youtu.be/yt2XoYCohEI
(above link is to a 1:17:22 video compilation which includes many scenes inside the building from the POV of rampaging Right Sektor thugs. Also shows a lot of dead bodies of people who didn't die in the fire.)

 http://youtu.be/9pUGJud91VY
(This one appears to show the first stage of the fire in the lobby, but not the outbreak itself. There is also a shot of someone holding a Ukrainian flag in a fourth floor window as the fire is burning in the lobby below.)

 http://youtu.be/qvKTe7QnLeo
(In addition to much else, this one shows the fire brigade at the back of the building and fires burning on the second and fourth floors of the stairwell.)

 http://youtu.be/FEXmGQEoruw
(Thugs rampaging inside, a fire burning on the stairway. Fire appears to be from a Molotov cocktail tossed through the window. No one appears to notice....)

http://youtu.be/NeARQM1HLF8
(WARNING: Graphic. This was live video taken as soon as news cameras could get in the building; many burned bodies, also bodies of people apparently shot inside or otherwise killed inside.)

http://youtu.be/d7cB_u89bbo
(This is some of the video I saw live on the Vremya Odessa livestream the night of May 2; there are bodies in unburned offices that have been trashed, and one in a stairwell. These people were most likely murdered rather than overcome with smoke.)

http://youtu.be/xPwbpVbF6R8
(This is an infamous video taken from Right Sektor POV immediately after most of the survivors had gotten out. There are dead bodies, and efforts are made to prove the "terrorists" are Russian. They aren't successful. Pisses 'em off.)

People tried to barricade themselves in offices for protection and sometimes they were successful. But there appear to have been many murders inside as well.

Of course the Odessa "authorities" have no interest in investigating those murders, only the ones they say took place at the riots and among the mob outside -- murders they say were caused by "Anti-Maidan" elements.

This is, as I've said before, a purely Nazi tactic. Accuse the victims of what the perpetrators have done, and "prove" it through whatever means necessary.

It's shameful enough that the so-called "government" in Kiev and its local appointees in Odessa are pulling this shit; worse though is the support they're getting from all the capitals of the EU/NATO/US axis, every single one. They're all denying that Right Sektor and other fascist thugs are responsible for any of the atrocities of the past week. Couldn't be. As all the racist thugs are Russian under Putin's direct order and control. Everyone knows that.

Still, I ask, how did the fire that killed so many people get started, and what fueled it to such intensity and prolongation?*

It's a question that goes to the nature of the fire itself, who started it and how, and how was it sustained for such a long time in an portion of the building that provided so little fuel?

The Odessa Massacre itself has become an iconic event in the current Ukrainian crisis, one that no doubt will be remembered down the ages. Propaganda is so intense around it that truth is liable to be hidden for some time to come.

Yet in the barrage of propaganda we're exposed to, it's important, in my view, to at least try to understand what really happened.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: I have since seen a Vremya Odessa interview with one of the investigators of the May 2 Massacre, and he said -- at least to the extent I was able to translate what he was saying -- that there was no explosion in the building, and that the fire shot up the back stairwell as if up a chimney, which is what I had suspected all along. The question remains, though, what caused a fire that had been burning in the lobby for a while to suddenly shoot up the stairwell, catching so many people in its smoke and flame.

Several things come to mind:

1)The fire was initially burning in the south end of the lobby. Early video shows no fire visible through the two northern entrances.

2)The door to the south entrance was open, however, which allowed flames and smoke to escape from the lobby to the front of the building.

3)The windows in the stairwell were broken out at some point which I haven't been able to determine. There were defenders on landings throwing stones and other objects out of the broken windows at the mob below. Members of the mob were hurling Molotov cocktails into the building through the broken stairwell windows.

4)For some time there was very little smoke coming out of the broken stairwell windows, and then suddenly there was a great deal of smoke and flames were seen shooting through the second floor windows. That's when men (and at least one woman?) jumped out of the stairwell windows, some apparently from the top floor, landing in the parking area at the foot of the stairwell, most badly injured. According to recent statistics, seven victims died in "falls" -- one assumes that means jumping out of windows. Eight were killed by gunshots. The rest of the now 48 dead died in the fire, either overcome by flame or by smoke or both. One man made it half way out of a window before he was overcome and his burnt body remained half-way out of the window until after the fire was extinguished and the bodies were collected.

5)The suddenness of flame and smoke racing up the stairwell -- when there had been very little smoke and no flame (except that caused by Molotov cocktails hurled from below) coming out of the stairwell previously, despite the fact that a fire was burning vigorously in the lobby -- suggests that either the direction of the wind changed, blowing smoke and flame from the front of the building toward the back, or some highly flammable material suddenly caught fire which massively increased the amount of smoke and flame in the lobby which could only escape through the stairwell. Of course, both could have happened simultaneously.

6) Members of the mob are seen in some videos throwing materials from the debris outside the front entrance toward the entrance doors. I haven't seen any video that shows that any of the debris they were hurling toward the front entrance actually made it inside,  but it could have. Among the debris being thrown toward the entrance were tires, pallets and other wooden debris, no doubt in order to feed the fire.

7)In one of the videos of the fire's aftermath in the lobby, there are two relatively large burnt metal containers on the steps. Did they contain a flammable liquid? There's no way to know from the video. But if they did contain something like gasoline, they might not have exploded, but they could well have burst into flame with sudden and significant force of both flame and smoke.

I will say that some of the mob outside the building seemed shocked, even horrified, when they realized what was happening, and many helped to rescue people from the burning building. Nevertheless, many of those who escaped the fire were badly beaten by the mob, and dozens were arrested and held by the police until they were released after loud and forceful protests.

The Fires

The sense of place around here in New Mexico includes an understanding that Fire will come, and sometimes it will be... awful.

When I was driving east through Gallup this trip (two weekends ago), the smoke from the Wallow Fire in Arizona, some 150 miles away, was settling on the town in a choking gray and yellow fog. It was pretty bad, but the situation in Albuquerque the previous week had been much worse, as the smoke lingered over the city like a shroud. People were advised not to use their swamp coolers or open windows or doors because of the smoke. Oh. Swamp coolers are the main cooling devices in this part of the nation, and going without them in triple digit temperatures is probably worse than breathing the smoke after it's been washed by the water cooler filter pads. Well, you would think anyway.

After I got out here to our place in the East Mountains, the smoke situation was mostly tolerable, though there were a couple of days when it was severe.

The Raton Fire caused much grief up north, but it's mostly out now. There were some smaller fires in the Manzanos and around Estancia, a really big one by Carlsbad, and another over by Clovis, but all of those have been mostly contained.

I could see the smoke plume from the Pacheco Fire up in Santa Fe when it started, and I thought, "Oh no." The fire has been burning in the Santa Fe National Forest pretty much uncontained ever since. It's not pleasant for the locals but the fire is not burning toward nor particularly near the city, so... it's become kind of the New Normal, at least for now. I saw the smoke plume from the Pacheco Fire when I was up in Santa Fe on Sunday, but there was little or no smoke in town which was a relief.

As I was leaving town on Sunday, though, I saw a HUGE new smoke plume rising from the Jemez Mountains to the west, so astonishing that people were stopping on the highway to gawp at it.

That's the Las Conchas Fire that's burning so close to Los Alamos (and Cochiti Lake, but who has ever heard of that?) right now and has caused the full evacuation of the town of Los Alamos and the closure of the Nuclear Lab. Los Alamos suffered terrible fire damage about 11 years ago, and the locals are not amused that it could happen again, though there is some relief that the forests that burned in 2000 haven't regrown to any great extent. The Lab personnel claim they have been doing forest thinning around the Lab since the 2000 fire, so they aren't expecting things to get really bad even if the new fire comes much closer to the Lab than it already has (some spot fires quickly put out.)

Hundreds of homes were burned in Los Alamos in 2000, and that's what they're worried could happen again. Yes. It's a valid concern all over New Mexico and wherever people live in the forest. There have been many devastating fires over the years, blasting through the forest sectors like bombs, leaving nothing but cinders in their wake.

The Governor is pleading with New Mexicans to avoid buying or using fireworks this Fourth of July, and I've noticed that my neighbors around here, some of whom like to blow off fireworks all year round -- cause it's fun and pretty! -- have been very discreet. If they are blowing off fireworks, there's no sign of it.

People know how dangerous it is.

They say the Las Conchas Fire was probably started by downed power lines. Other fires have been started by sparks from ATVs, and one in the Bosque in Albuquerque the other day was apparently started by some fool with fireworks (oops!). Typically fires at this time of year start from lightning strikes, but there's been very little of that. There's no rain, none to speak of since February -- and that was snow. There are very few clouds. It is major drought time, as severe as I've ever seen it here, though old timers say it was worse about ten years ago. That was the worst drought any of them had witnessed in these parts. But this is dry country even when it isn't in drought.

Fire is part of the natural cycle.

It's usually not so pervasive. Even when the fires are relatively distant, there are times when you feel surrounded just the same. It's part of the Place.

The Smoke

Arrived at our place in New Mexico yesterday afternoon.

You may have heard that the smoke from the Wallow fire on the Arizona/New Mexico border is being blown east and north by the wind. Yes, yes it is. I could see the bank of smoke on the eastern horizon all the way from Holbrook while I drove east on I-40. I stopped at the New Mexico welcome center just over the state line, and I could see tongues of smoke creeping over the fancy mesa against which the center is set. Driving on, the smoke became thicker and thicker until by Gallup, the smoke was heavy, acrid, and very close to the ground. And Gallup is some 150 miles north of the north edge of the fire.

The smoke was thick, almost like a heavy, yellowish fog, all the way to Grants/Milan. The worst was where it was mixed with blowing dust. Then it thinned and rose somewhat, such that in some areas it almost seemed like the air was clear -- except for the yellowish gunk on the horizon. So it was all the way to Albuquerque and beyond. In fact, going over the Tijeras Pass, the sky was clear blue, the first of that I had seen since entering New Mexico, but just over Sedillo Hill, once again you could see thin but obvious smoke relatively high in the air.

A couple of years ago, much of the forest cover on the east side of the Manzanos not far from our place burned, with much structural damage, evacuation of thousands, and ruined mountainsides for miles and miles. It was a terrible fire, but it was confined to the mountainsides, and the wind was not too bad, so the smoke rose relatively straight up in the air and dissipated.

Smoke bothers me. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I used to smoke cigarettes; quit about 15 years ago. (Used the nicotine patch, worked like a charm, was smoke free within a week, and have never had any desire for a cigarette since. The relief was wonderful!)

But when first I came to New Mexico, I was a heavy smoker, and it didn't occur to me that the altitude here might have an effect on me -- and other smokers -- with predictable results.

Indeed. I've only been to Taos once, a very long time ago now. I used to hate going to Santa Fe, and I loudly despised the town, the people, the idiocy of it all. I was relatively OK in Albuquerque, but if I went up the Sandias too far, all that crabbiness I felt in Santa Fe would return. At the time, I didn't connect the nastiness of my mood swings in New Mexico -- or at high elevations anywhere else -- with smoking. I didn't occur to me.

But after I quit, we were having lunch at a cafe on the Albuquerque Plaza, sitting outside, it was a beautiful day. And the table next to us was occupied by a couple, both of whom were smokers. They hated everything. Just everything was wrong, and they were complaining constantly. I thought, "Hm, where have I seen this before?" Of course, I was like that at one time. And I'd seen the same effect among smokers up in Santa Fe. If anything, it was worse there.

The problem is simple: smokers from lower elevations (and our house in California is barely above sea level) can't breathe in the rarified air of the high desert, which means most of New Mexico. The higher the elevation, the worse it gets for smokers. Sometimes they try to "breathe" by smoking more -- which makes the condition worse.

And that physical phenomenon -- which smokers may not recognize at all -- has a profound effect on mood and attitude. Once you recognize what's going on, you may be able to compensate, either by laughing at yourself when you get all crabbified, or by cutting back on smoking while you're in the high desert. Or by quitting altogether.

I've become so sensitive to smoke since I quit smoking cigarettes that even a burning fireplace can cause a physical reaction in me similar to an allergy attack. So when there's smoke in the air like there is here -- even the small amount there is today (predictions are for it to get thicker later in the day due to wind changes) -- I tend to sneeze and cough and whatnot. I can deal with it, though, because I know what's going on.

But I've often thought that one of the things New Mexico should offer at its welcome centers and rest stops is counseling for smokers: let them know that they will be at a relatively high altitude in most of New Mexico, very high in some areas, and that high altitude has a stronger physical effect on smokers from lower altitudes than on non-smokers. Smokers may feel unaccountably moody, cranky, and even angry for no apparent reason. They may lash out or complain incessantly or feel very depressed. Sometimes, they can control their own moods by understanding that their moods are connected with breathing difficulties they're having -- but not necessarily recognizing -- at high altitudes. Recommendation is to take it very easily while at high altitudes, move slowly, cut back on or stop smoking, and to realize that your unaccountable crabbiness is due to your own breathing difficulties at high altitudes, not necessarily something intrinsically AWFUL about the people and places you are visiting.

Have a nice day! ☺