Notre Dame fire: Macron’s five-year rebuilding pledge is unrealistic, experts warn
Doosuur Iwambe, Abuja
Emily Guerry, a professor of medieval history at England’s University of Kent has said that restoration work on the 850-year-old icon would take around two decades.
The expert who was reacting to president Emmanuel Macron announcement that he wants to see Notre Dame cathedral rebuilt “more beautiful than before” within five years said, “rebuilding the cathedral will certainly take years, perhaps even decades, until the last damage caused by this terrible fire will be completely repaired.”
“This will be the largest, most important cultural renovation project in France for some time to come,” she said, adding that the process would be “very delicate.”
On his part, Jean-Claude Bellanger, secretary-general of Les Compagnons du Devoir, an organization that provides training in manual trades, said that the niche nature of the work would require an influx of new talent.
“We need to open some 100 places in our carpentry, stone-cutting and roofing sections,” he said, with at least 300 more skilled tradesmen also needing training.
A decade is necessary to train some of the specialized workers required for such a project, Bellanger added.
Also, Bertrand de Feydeau, vice president of preservation group Fondation du Patrimoine, said that the 800-year-old roof that went up in flames was built with wood from forests that have all but disappeared.
It won’t be rebuilt precisely as it was before because “we don’t, at the moment, have trees on our territory of the size that were cut in the 13th century,” he told The Associated Press.
But before any work could even start, the building has to be made safe.
“There is still a risk of collapse of any part of the church, so the priority goes to the ‘securitization’ of the area to make sure that experts can go safely into the church”.
