FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, after a colossal fire tore through the building, sending the spire crashing to the ground and wiping out centuries of heritage.

Macron expressed relief that “the worst had been avoided” in a blaze that had at one point threatened the entire edifice, and left France in shock over the damage to a building described as the soul of the nation.

The inferno destroyed the roof of the 850-year-old UNESCO world heritage landmark, whose spectacular Gothic spire collapsed as orange flames and clouds of grey smoke billowed into the sky.

The devastating fire has been extinguished after burning for 15 hours, local media reported yesterday. “The whole fire is extinguished,” Paris firefighters’ spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Gabriel Plus said.

Local firefighters worked through the night to monitor the cathedral’s structure and extinguish residual pockets of fire inside the building, Plus said.

“During the night, the 1,000-square-meter roof went up in smoke. Until this morning the mission was to preserve the two bell towers ... to ensure that they will not collapse,” he said.

Thorough checks on the cathedral’s structural soundness would be needed, he added.

Flames that began in the early evening Monday burst rapidly through the roof of the centuries-old cathedral and engulfed the spire, which toppled, quickly followed by the entire roof.

‘France is Notre Dame’

“Notre Dame survived all the wars, all the bombardments. We never thought it could burn. I feel incredibly sad and empty,” Stephane Seigneurie, a consultant who joined other shocked onlookers in a solemn rendition of “Ave Maria” as they watched the fire from a nearby bridge.

Gasps and cries of “Oh my God” erupted around an hour after the fire first broke out when the top portion of the church’s spire came crashing down.

“We have been dealt a knockout blow,” a stricken-looking Paris Archbishop Michel Aupetit told reporters.

The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear, but the cathedral had been undergoing intense restoration work which the fire service said could be linked to the blaze.

French prosecutors said it was currently being treated as an accident.

Historians expressed incredulity at the collapse of a building that has been a symbol of France for almost a millennium.

“If Paris is the Eiffel Tower then France is Notre Dame. It’s the entire culture, entire history of France incarnated in this monument,” Bernard Lecomte, a writer and specialist in religious history told BFM TV.

Deputy Paris mayor Emmanuel Gregoire told the channel that workers were scrambling “to save all the artworks that can be saved.” Officials later said teams had managed to salvage an unknown quantity of the cultural treasures.

‘Emotion of a nation’

Macron canceled a planned policy speech and headed to the scene, where he vowed the cathedral would be reborn.

“We will rebuild Notre Dame because it is what the French expect,” he said, describing Notre Dame as “the epicenter of our life” and the cathedral of “all the French,” whether religious or not.

France’s billionaire Pinault dynasty immediately pledged 100 million euros (US$113 million) for the effort.

Fire hard to put out

Notre Dame’s centuries-old wooden roof beams, stone exterior and soaring Gothic architecture made Monday’s blaze especially difficult to tackle, and Paris firefighters deserve praise for their efforts, experts say.

The biggest problem, experts say, was accessing the wooden ceiling beams which formed the frame for the soaring roof.

The cathedral’s ceiling contains thousands of oak beams, some of which date as far back as the 12th century.

Once the beams start burning, the stone exterior makes it harder for firefighters outside the building to get to the source of the flames. The stone traps heat and smoke, preventing them from working inside.

Aerial options like the one suggested by U.S. President Donald Trump were considered unrealistic. “Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly!” Trump said in a tweet.

But the French civil security agency, Securite Civile, said in a tweet that any aerial water dumping could “weaken the structure of Notre Dame and result in collateral damage to the buildings in the vicinity.”

(SD-Agencies)