WHAT WE MIGHT HAVE LOST …
The accident
It was 3 minutes past 8 in the morning of Tuesday 4 May when we received a call from Olivier Bao, Chief of the Ponferrada Fire Brigade, informing us of an already extinguished fire that had broken out in the early hours of the morning in a church declared Bien de Interés Cultural – BIC (Site of Cultural Interest) (2) in Balboa, a small village in León (Spain), 43 km from Ponferrada (the largest town and where the municipality’s central emergency service that serves other smaller towns, such as Balboa is based).
Reflections on the Notre-Dame de Paris fire: the Cultural Heritage Protection Plan put to the test
In 2017, France had more than 45,000 protected historical monuments. In the event of disaster, civil security forces are called to intervene to protect threatened property in accordance with the law on the modernisation of civil security of 13 August 2004. Therefore, on the night of 15 to 16 April 2019, during the fire that ravaged Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, all public players mobilised to help manage the disaster and save this emblematic monument.
