Notre-Dame de Paris: one month before reopening, where is the investigation into the fire?

Is this the end of the investigation? Five and a half years after the terrible fire which ravaged the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral (4th), in particular its spire and its roof, “the analyzes of the elements taken from the rubble have been completed”, indicated to our colleagues at the end of October of Ouest-France the Paris prosecutor’s office.

“Nothing directs (the investigation) towards a voluntary act,” adds the prosecution. The fact remains that the evolution of this investigation, started the day after the tragedy, is discreet. And there are still several unknowns one month before the reopening of the Gothic building, more than 850 years old, the most visited monument in the capital.

The end of the analyzes is coupled with the completion of a “synthesis of the expertise to specify the moment of the start of the flames and the area”. Its source would be a horizontal beam called a “sand pit”, located at the south-east corner of the transept crossing.

The preferred accidental track from 2019

An additional step, “3D modeling from images” captured on the site, is still in progress. It should shed light on how the fire could have progressed in the building. “There are still a few months of work to create this virtual tool,” adds the Paris prosecutor’s office. It should allow us to better understand what could have happened. »

Already in June 2019, at the end of the preliminary investigation, Paris prosecutor Rémy Heitz indicated that he favored the scenario of a poorly extinguished cigarette butt or an electrical malfunction. New assessments ordered at the end of 2023 reached the same conclusions. The trail of criminal act, while no indictment has been issued in this case, seems more and more illusory.