SUMMARY:In Paris and across the globe, stunned spectators watched in horror as the Notre Dame Cathedral burned Monday. The fire started in the evening, shortly after the building was closed to the public, and appears to have caused “catastrophic” damage to one of the world’s most famous cultural and artistic landmarks. Judy Woodruff talks to Kate Moody of the French news channel France 24 for the latest.
SUMMARY: A devastating fire consumed parts of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Monday. While the biggest question is whether the structure itself will survive, there is no doubt that the artistic and historic landmark sustained losses that won’t be recoverable. Judy Woodruff talks to art historian Elizabeth Lev about the “shock” incurred by observing this “iconic monument” engulfed in flames.
SUMMARY:Notre Dame Cathedral is a seminal touchstone of French history, art and culture, and seeing it sustain devastating damage in a huge fire on Monday sent shockwaves of grief throughout France and the world. Judy Woodruff talks to Gerard Araud, France’s Ambassador to the U.S., about the structure’s role within French national identity and feeling as if a part of himself were burning.
SUMMARY: In Paris, the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral is extinguished, but devastating damage remains. Parisians stood alongside global travelers at the site Tuesday, paying tribute to the landmark of cultural achievement that has stood for nearly a millennium. Amid the ashes, the rescue of several of the most beloved artifacts seemed miraculous. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports from Paris.
SUMMARY:French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral within five years, in time for Paris to host the 2024 Olympics. To meet the ambitious schedule, Macron said architects from around the world would be invited to submit designs for the famous spire that fell in Monday’s fire. Meanwhile, the investigation continues into what started the blaze. ITN’s Paraic O’Brien reports.
SUMMARY: Confined spaces, low gravity and high concentrations of oxygen mean any unexpected fire on a space station could well be a death sentence, especially since fire extinguishers aren’t very effective away from Earth. So NASA scientists are trying to develop a new kind of firefighting tool by starting their own space fires and studying how they unfold. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien reports.
JOHN GRUNSFELD, NASA: We are crossing an international boundary. We are on the U.S. side now, and now we are on the Russian Mir space station.
MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour): By 1997, the Russian space station Mir was 11 years old and showing its age. During the fifth shuttle mission to the station, astronaut John Grunsfeld documented the warren of modules brimming with a disorienting maze of cables, hoses and trash.
JOHN GRUNSFELD: I feel like I am exploring a cave.
MILES O’BRIEN:Can you imagine being in a fire here?
JERRY LINENGER, Former NASA Astronaut: The fire was basically in this region here with the flames shooting across this way.
MILES O’BRIEN: The source was a canister filled with chemicals designed to generate oxygen.
JERRY LINENGER: You have got a two- or three-foot flame, blowtorch-like in intensity, sparks flying off the end of it. It looks like a hundred sparklers all at once.
MILES O’BRIEN: Linenger and his Russian crewmates donned masks and frantically fought the fire.
JERRY LINENGER:The fire took about 14 minutes total, and 14 minutes is a long time with a roaring fire and a blackout from the smoke, and no place to go. And if it were any bigger, I’m pretty darn sure we would have lost that spacecraft.
MILES O’BRIEN: For NASA scientists and engineers, it was a big wakeup call.
GARY RUFF, NASA:One of the things that you learn is, we really didn’t have a way to put that fire out.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): Firefighters in California reported more progress today in the two-week battle against a huge wildfire near Yosemite National Park.
A NewsHour team has been covering one of their top priorities: protecting an ancient grove of giant sequoias in the park.
MAN: Well, we're almost to the big tree.
KWAME HOLMAN (Newshour): Even as wildfires raged miles away on the other end of Yosemite, a steady stream of visitors this week hiked up a scenic trail to see one of the park's biggest attractions, the giant sequoias.
These massive trees, which are unique to California's Sierra Nevada Mountains, are among the oldest living organisms on Earth. The grandest in Yosemite's Mariposa Grove is the so-called Grizzly Giant, estimated to be 1,800 years old, and it's no stranger to fire.
Many sequoias here bear huge black scars from natural wildfires that have burned through these forests for thousands of years. But now an unprecedented fire, the largest in Sierra history, is threatening two of Yosemite's three giant sequoia groves. ---- JOHN WALLACE, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: These fires are just becoming more and more common now.
I mean, since 2000, we have had all these 500,000-acre, 600,000-acre fires, these mega-fires. Before 2000, a 100,000-acre fire was huge. But things have been warming up, drying out. And then we have got these high fuel loads in a lot of places. And that's contributing to these bigger, more intense fires.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Investigators on the ground in Arizona are still trying to determine why so many firefighters died in Sunday's tragedy, even as other crews are struggling to slow the blaze.
The morning brought calmer winds in Yarnell, Ariz., today. But the deadly fire that started Friday remained largely uncontained. Fire spokeswoman Karen Takai warned afternoon thunderstorms and winds today could bring more threats to the parched landscape.
KAREN TAKAI, Southwest Incident Management Team Spokesperson: There's not a lot of large timber, but the vegetation out there, that mesquite is extremely oily. And once that starts, an ember gets into those extremely dry fuels, that fire is going to rip. And it's very difficult to control that at that degree, especially with the winds that we're having out here.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The dangerous conditions which claimed the lives of 19 Prescott, Ariz., firefighters Sunday. They died when the raging fire, fueled by sudden and changing wind gusts, overcame the crew.
Last night, fellow firefighters paused to remember their fallen comrades.
MAN: Andrew Ashcraft, 29.
MAN: Anthony Rose, 23.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And more than 1,000 people grieved the community's loss in a Prescott gymnasium.
The city's mayor paid tribute to the crew.
MAYOR MARLIN KUYKENDALL, Prescott, Ariz.: The city of Prescott, you and I, we lost 18, 19 wonderful individuals, family men, and it was like that.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Elsewhere, family members of those killed spoke of their loved ones. Kevin Woyjeck was recalled by his sister as a third-generation firefighter who wanted to follow in his father's footsteps.
WOMAN: My parents lost a son. My brother lost his best friend, and I lost my guardian angel. And it's never going to be forgotten.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And Andrew Ashcraft, who leaves four children, was mourned by his wife.
WOMAN: We celebrated their dad and the hero that he is and will always be. And he's an angel for us now.
JUDY WOODRUFF: An investigative team is being deployed to the area where the firefighters died.
Takai underscored, this fire is part of a larger trend.
KAREN TAKAI: We are in a long-term drought. And that keeps on being repeated. But that's what we're seeing with these mega-fires, that it's throughout the Southwest. It's not only here. It's other areas.
JUDY WOODRUFF: In addition to the Yarnell Hill blaze, 15 other major wild fires continue to burn in the Western United States.
SUMMARY: How do weather conditions, land use and forestry practices play a role in sparking wildfires nationwide? Judy Woodruff speaks to author and journalist Michael Kodas ,who has been covering the deadly wildfire in Prescott, Ariz., about fire risks and whether the latest fatalities will affect firefighting policy in the future.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): A firestorm raged in the Colorado countryside today, after exploding across containment lines near Colorado Springs. Firefighters struggled to keep up and homeowners scrambled to get out of the way.
NewsHour correspondent Tom Bearden begins our coverage.
TOM BEARDEN: The flames swallowed entire neighborhoods on the edge of Colorado Springs overnight. The mayor's office said dozens of homes were destroyed.
MAN: Visibility is down to near zero in many parts of the northern half of Colorado Springs.
TOM BEARDEN: The Waldo Canyon fire seemed to flare out of control in the blink of an eye when the winds picked up unexpectedly.
WOMAN: These winds started picking up to about 65 miles per hour. That wasn't in the plan.
GOV. JOHN HICKENLOOPER (D), Colorado: This is tough, and we're going to -- and we know it's going to be tough, but we're also not going to back away. We're not going to back quit.
TOM BEARDEN: Some 32,000 people were ordered to evacuate, and fast, including hundreds living on the U.S. Air Force Academy campus. They grabbed precious possessions on the fly.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): Fire managers in Colorado and New Mexico spent the day calling in major new manpower and hoping for help from nature. The developments underscored that fire season has set in with a vengeance in the Southwest.
Thick clouds of smoke drifted across the Northern Colorado sky, as flames consumed more and more of the forest below. The High Park fire is believed to have been sparked early Saturday by a lightning strike 15 miles west of Fort Collins. Since then, the big blaze has covered more than 60 square miles, with nothing to slow it down.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
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