How Notre-Dame Was Saved: 5 Things We Know
巴黎圣母院火灾调查的五个关键要点

How was it that fire ravaged Notre-Dame? And how was it saved?

巴黎圣母院的那场大火究竟是怎么回事？巴黎圣母院又是怎么得救的？

A New York Times investigation found that a miscommunication among security employees and flawed planning let the fire spin out of control in one of France’s most revered monuments on April 15. When the firefighters were called, it was already too late to stop it from spreading.

《纽约时报》的一项调查发现，由于安全人员之间的沟通不畅和规划上的缺陷，导致4月15日法国最受推崇的古迹之一起火后失控。当消防员被叫来时，已经无法阻止火势的蔓延。

Some 500 firefighters battled the blaze into the night. Some, at the peril of their own lives, went inside the northern tower to protect it from flames at a moment when it could have collapsed at any time. This decisive moment saved the structure.

约有500名消防员与大火搏斗到了深夜。他们中一些冒着生命危险进入北塔内部，在它可能随时倒塌的时刻，保护它免受火焰的吞噬。这一决定性时刻挽救了大教堂的主体结构。

Here is what the investigation revealed about a foretold tragedy, and how the worst was averted.

以下是调查所揭示出的一场预料之中的悲剧，以及最坏的情况是如何得以避免的。

Security employees couldn’t locate the fire and waited 30 minutes before calling the firefighters.

保安找不到起火的位置，等了30分钟才报火警。

After the first warning light flashed with the word ‘Feu,’ or fire, at 6:18 p.m. on April 15, a fire security employee monitoring a control panel at the cathedral radioed a church guard by walkie-talkie, so he could go to check if there was actually a fire. This is a general French practice.

4月15日晚6点18分，当第一盏警示灯上亮起“火”这个字时，一名监控大教堂控制板的消防安全人员通过对讲机呼叫了一名教堂保安，让他去查看是否真的起火。这在法国是常规做法。

But the church guard went to the wrong place: instead of walking up to the cathedral’s attic, he went to check the attic of an adjacent building, the sacristy. It is unclear whether the security employee misread the message, or if the church guard misunderstood it, but neither could locate the fire.

但这名教堂保安去错了地方：他没有上到大教堂的塔楼，反而去查看了隔壁一栋楼的塔楼：圣器收藏室。尚不清楚是否这名安全人员误读了信息，或是教堂保安误解了信息，但两人均未能确定起火位置。

The security employee assumed it was a false alarm and tried to deactivate the system. He didn’t call the firefighters. In the meantime, the church guard stayed in the sacristy.

保安以为那是个假警报，并试图关闭系统。他没有打电话叫消防员。与此同时，教堂保安仍在圣器收藏室内。

After several phone calls among employees and 25 precious minutes wasted, a manager finally gave the right order to the church guard: go to the cathedral attic. Only when the church guard located the fire there, at 6:48 p.m., did the security employee finally call the firefighters.

工作人员之间互拨了几通电话，浪费了25分钟宝贵时间后，一名经理终于给教堂保安下达了正确的命令：去大教堂的阁楼。下午6点48分，这名教堂保安才确定火灾位置在那里，安全人员终于报了火警。

The design of the fire alarm system was riddled with faulty assumptions.

火灾预警系统的设计有太多错误假设。

Archival documents found in a suburban Paris library show that it took six years, dozens of experts and thousands of pages of documents to set up the fire warning system at Notre-Dame.

在巴黎郊区一所图书馆找到的档案文件显示，巴黎圣母院火警系统的建立花了六年时间，调集了几十名专家，生成了几千页文件。

With more than 160 detectors and manual alarms, it seemed elaborate enough to detect any smoke and send an alert. Yet little was done to prevent a fire from spreading: There were no sprinklers or firewalls in the attic. The alarm message was hardly understandable.

这个系统有160多个探测器和手动报警器，似乎足够精密，能探测出所有烟雾并发出警报。但它几乎没有防止火势蔓延的措施：塔楼里没有洒水装置或者防火墙。警报信息让人难以理解。

What was designed to generate a quick response led to a critical loss of time.

设计它的目的本是产生快速反应，结果却严重耽误时间。

“The whole outcome of it is this clumsy human response,” said Glenn Corbett, an associate professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “You can spend a lot to detect a fire, but it all goes down the drain when you don’t move on it.”

“它的全部结果就是人的笨拙反应，”纽约约翰·杰刑事司法学院(John Jay College of Criminal Justice)消防学副教授格伦·科贝特(Glenn Corbett)说。“你可以花很多钱来侦测火情，但如不采取行动，一切都是白费。”

On top of those flaws came the inexperience of the security employee monitoring the control panel, who had been working at Notre-Dame for just three days. He had never been to the attic.

除这些缺陷外，还有监控控制板的保安人员经验不足的问题，他当时刚在巴黎圣母院工作三天。他也从未去过塔楼。

“The only thing that surprised me is that this disaster didn’t happen sooner,” said Albert Simeoni, the head of fire protection engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.

“唯一令我感到意外的是，这场灾难竟然没有来得更早，”马萨诸塞州伍斯特理工学院(Worcester Polytechnic Institute)消防工程主任阿尔伯特·西梅奥尼(Albert Simeoni)说。

The delay in calling the firefighters left them in a nearly impossible position.

延迟报火警让他们处在了几乎无能为力的境地。

The first firefighters reached Notre-Dame shortly before 7 p.m., when the cathedral was already engulfed with flames. They couldn’t contain the flames on the roof, which were whipped up by winds that pushed the fire toward the towers.

首批消防员在将近7点时赶到了巴黎圣母院，当时大教堂已被火焰笼罩。他们无法控制住教堂顶上的火势，火焰被风吹起，把大火推向塔楼。

When the spire collapsed, it sent a fireball through the attic. Some firefighters were just a few feet away. Yet none were killed.

塔尖倒塌时，一个火球跟着击穿了阁楼。一些消防员就在几英尺远的地方。但没有人员死亡。

The collapse set the firefighters back further after a critically late start.

继太晚采取行动之后，塔尖倒塌又让消防员退后了一步。

“It’s like starting a 400 meters several dozen meters behind,” said Gen. Jean-Marie Gontier, the Paris brigade deputy fire chief, comparing the fight to a foot race.

“那就像是从起跑线后几十米远的地方开始400米跑，”巴黎消防队副队长让-玛里·贡蒂埃将军(Gen. Jean-Marie Gontier)在把灭火比作赛跑。

The cathedral was dangerously close to collapsing.

大教堂濒临倒塌的危险。

After the spire collapsed, the fire brigade general overseeing the operations convened a critical meeting and decided to throw everything into saving the towers, focusing on the northern one, already on fire.

塔尖倒塌后，负责此次作业的消防队长召开了紧急会议，决定不惜一切代价挽救塔楼，重点拯救北侧已经起火的塔楼。

That probably saved the cathedral.

很可能是这一点保住了大教堂。

Inside the northern tower, eight giant bells hung precariously on wooden beams. The firefighters feared that if the beams collapsed, the falling bells would act like wrecking balls and destroy the tower.

在北塔内部，8座巨大的时钟摇摇欲坠地挂在木梁上。消防员担心，一旦木梁倒塌，坠落的时钟会像破坏球一般摧毁塔楼。

“At that point, it was clear that some firefighters were going to go into the cathedral without knowing if they would come back out,” said Ariel Weil, the Paris mayor of the 4th Arrondissement, where Notre-Dame is.

“很显然那一刻，一些消防员进入大教堂时都不知道还能不能活着出来，”巴黎圣母院所在的巴黎第4区区长阿里埃尔·魏尔(Ariel Weil)说。

Inside the northern tower, a group of firefighters reached a floor at the height of the bells, where they were able to battle the flames back. One firefighter almost fell through the wooden, cracking steps.

在北塔内部，一队消防员够到了时钟所在的楼层，在那里扑火。一名消防员差点儿从开裂的木台阶上掉下来。

By 9:45 p.m., they had tamed most of the flames.

直至晚9点45分，他们驯服了大部分火势。

What caused the fire? We still don’t know.

是什么引起了火灾？我们仍不知道。

Investigators have said that the fire may have been caused by a short-circuit in the electrified bells of the spire, or in the elevators that had been set up on the scaffolding. Cigarette butts, left by workers and found on the scaffolding, are another possibility.

调查人员曾表示，大火可能是塔尖的电铃或脚手架上的电梯短路造成的。脚手架上工人留下并被发现的烟头是另一种可能的原因。

Church and fire security employees have been blaming each other for the miscommunication and delay in calling the firefighters. Investigators have yet to say who was responsible.