PARIS -- There was little time to waste. The wood-and-lead roof was a crackling inferno overhead. The flames were snaking down though the majestic woodwork inside Notre Dame Cathedral.
Very soon, the fire would begin threatening the artwork, liturgical items and priceless religious relics tucked throughout the warrens and alcoves of the cathedral.
Firefighters rushed in, looking for whatever they could grab and carry to safety, according to accounts by Paris officials and French media. The Fire Department chaplain -- his glasses reflecting the orange flames -- demanded to join them.
Then a human chain took shape, Paris' deputy mayor for tourism and sports, Jean-Francois Martins, told CBS This Morning. It included Parisian officials, church caretakers, and the Rev. Jean-Marc Fournier, the fire chaplain who, hours earlier, had been preparing events for Easter week.
"We have avoided a complete disaster," said Maxime Cumunel, secretary general of France's Observatory for Religious Heritage. But he said that perhaps "5 to 10 percent of the artwork has probably been destroyed."
Among the items they salvaged, said French Culture Minister Franck Riester, was the Crown of Thorns that many worshippers believe was worn by Jesus before his crucifixion. Also saved a tunic once donned by Saint Louis in the 13th century -- while Notre Dame was being built.
Both of those items are now in safekeeping at Paris City Hall nearby and will ultimately join a convoy of others soon to be taken to the Louvre Museum, Riester announced.
Etienne Loraillere, the editor of France's KTO Catholic television network, said chaplain Fournier played a key role in saving the Crown of Thorns and other items. Fournier had been a military chaplain who served in Afghanistan, and in 2015 comforted survivors after a rampage at the Bataclan theater and northern Paris in which 130 people were killed.
Fortunately, Notre Dame was nearly empty when the disaster struck.
In another twist of good fortune amid the ruins, 19th century copper statues of the Twelve Apostles and four other biblical figures had been removed by crane from Notre Dame last week to be cleaned as part of an overall restoration project at the cathedral.
Other, immovable pieces that made it through the fire -- such as the 8,000-pipe organ originally built in 1403 -- will be carefully assessed in place for water damage.
The tally of what was lost, however, is already profound. It includes fragments of the remains of Saint Genevieve and Saint Denis, portions of which were installed in 1935 in architect Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc's 19th-century spire, which collapsed at the height of Monday's blaze.
Historians emphasized that the cathedral itself is an emblem for a certain architectural style and the advancements that came with it.
"A lot of features of this church, while not unique, were new at the time," Samantha Herrick, a historian of medieval France. "Stained glass was new, flying buttresses were new, Gothic architecture itself was new. This was a site of innovation."
For the moment, the most pressing question is the state of the cathedral's sprawling stained-glass masterpieces -- and particularly the three multicolored rose windows originally installed in the 13th century and restored 600 years later. Despite the subsequent restorations, the windows still contain some of their original medieval elements.
Images showed that the rose windows technically remained intact, but the condition of the materials was far from certain. "Clearly, they were damaged, but to what degree we don't yet know," said Karine Boulanger, a specialist in stained glass at the Sorbonne University in Paris.
"We can see they are still in place, but we don't know in which state they are in, at least in a detailed manner," she said. "Even if the fire didn't come all the way down into the cathedral itself, the heat itself was very intense. And the heat will have impacted the glass, as well as the material that keeps the glass panels together."
A Section on 04/17/2019