Mary1966 wrote:
It was reported on CNN that its being hypothesized that the fire was started accidentally, by the people who were renovating the cathedral. Since the fire first was seen at 5:50PM local time, and appeared to start near the scaffolding in place for the renovation, this is a plausible theory. I hope none of the renovators were killed or injured.
I have seen a few people on Twitter propose that the fire was arson caused by atheists in the thread from the firefighter expert guy from St. Louis (did I see that here I think?) but I ignore their thoughts based on the fact that they all seemed to have 'conservative' mentioned in their Twitter handle.
I also work with a guy from Scotland and he was saying that fires like this happen all of the time in churches in Europe during renovations, just not always on one so historic. He pointed out that other than the stone, the buildings are constructed of nothing but combustible materials that have had a few hundred years to dry out and turn into kindling just ready to erupt if a worker restoring the place leaves something hot sitting in the wrong place. He said the fires start quick and once they start, you aren't stopping them unless you get really lucky.