This archive report was first published on 18 July 2020.
On July 18, 2020, a fire engulfed the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in Nantes, France, prompting a swift response from over 100 firefighters.
Despite the ominous images of flames and smoke, General Laurent Ferlay, the head of the firefighters in the Loire Atlantique area, assured that the fire was not as severe as the 2019 Notre-Dame blaze in Paris.
"It is not a scenario à la Notre-Dame de Paris," General Ferlay told reporters, adding that the fire, though contained, was not yet extinguished.
The fire, which broke out near the organ of the cathedral, destroyed the instrument entirely and raised suspicions of an intentional act, as three separate starting points for the blaze had been detected.
French television stations broadcast images of thick smoke pouring out of a giant stained window, a painful reminder for many of the devastating Notre-Dame fire.
The Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, a Gothic building in Nantes that was built across four centuries and completed in 1891, had previously been charred by fire in 1972, but its concrete structure helped limit the damage this time.
