Fire at Notre Dame Cathedral is fully extinguished, Paris firefighters say

Firefighters declared success on Tuesday morning in their more than 12-hour battle to extinguish the flames that engulfed Paris’ iconic Notre Dame Cathedral. What remained was a blackened shell of the building that had survived almost 900 years of tumultuous French history, AP said. The two 69-meter bell towers remained intact, while the cathedral’s spire and roof were gone. “The entire fire is out,” Paris firefighters spokesman Gabriel Plus said, adding that emergency services are currently “surveying the movement of the structures and extinguishing smoldering residues.” The task overnight was “to bring the fire under control so it doesn’t re-start,” according to Junior Interior Minister Laurent Nunez. “The task is – now the risk of fire has been put aside – about the building, how the structure will resist,” he added. Officials consider the fire an accident, possibly as a result of restoration work.