Fire: The Original ‘Do-Over’ Button

At this point we’ve all heard about the fire at Notre Dame in Paris. It is a very sad thing to watch something so beautiful be destroyed, and a great many people have shared their memories of the building and their feelings having seen it brought down by one of nature’s most volatile and unpredictable forces. But while it is certainly tragic, and at the moment emotions are running high, one thing is definite: it will be rebuilt.



Fire terrifies me. ‘Things that burn’ hold the number one spot on the list of Things Elizabeth Really Doesn’t Like. I was five during the Oakland Firestorm, and as a result of constant news coverage I somehow got it into my child-sized brain that by the time I got home from kindergarten each day my house would have been burned to the ground. I was terrified of this every. Single. Day. For a long time. I refused to light matches until I was 15 or 16. I avoided ovens and stoves and irons. (Heck, I still get nervous ironing.) However, with age (supposedly) comes wisdom, and though it’s still not my favorite thing, I have come to respect the regenerative possibilities fire can offer--like clearing the underbrush in order for forests to be healthier in the long run--and that’s really much healthier than being anxious about wildfires ravaging the place since I live in California and the whole state is scheduled to be on fire from May to November every year...

In this instance, of course, a piece of historical architecture has been damaged, and while it won’t be replaced with something different, it will certainly be replaced with newer methods and failsafes to help ensure that this sort of disaster is less likely to occur in the future. The rebuilding will start as soon as is feasible and will likely be a top news item for some time to come. Everybody is going to have an opinion or a theory or a suggestion. Some of them will be good. Some of them will be purposefully silly. Some of them will be inflammatory.* There will be plenty of detractors--there already are. The Internet being the delectable cesspool of societal dregs it is, it wasn’t long after news of the fire broke that the ‘debaters’ started to come out of the woodwork.

“It’s just a building, who cares? It’s burned down before. Big whoop.”

“There are twelve gazillion other churches/religious sites that have burned down in the last 16 seconds, why doesn’t anyone care about them?!”

“The Catholic church has so much money and yet everyone is running toward them with their checkbooks out to give them more--why not put those funds toward [name worthy cause]?! Clearly if you have that much to spare you could solve a few real problems!”

Number one, yes, on the face of it, it’s ‘just a building’. But it is a beautiful, architectural marvel of a building with a long and fascinating history, and now this fire will be a part of that. You don’t have to be a dick about it.

Number two, simple: the coverage of the fire at Notre Dame got pushed up to the top of the list because it is a well-known location. People travel from all over the world to see it. It’s not that no one cares about the other places that have suffered the same fate in recent times, it’s simply that the coverage of those events has likely been localized. You can’t shout at people who live in Alaska for saying how sad they are that Notre-freaking-Dame has been damaged by a fire but not offering the same for a church in, say, the greater Columbus, Ohio area which didn’t get national news coverage. I know that they say that ignorance is no excuse, but no one can devote their life to searching for every single tragic happening in the world at all times in order to be appropriately upset about them. Everyone who responded to the fire in Paris with, “Hey, you didn’t care about all these things. You’re a terrible person,” needs to take it down a notch, m’kay? It is absolutely sad that the events not receiving the same level of coverage have occurred! It’s likely that the people closest to those events or in possession of knowledge of those events have expressed feelings as deeply moving as those being expressed for Notre Dame. You don’t. Have to be. A dick. About. It.

Number three--okay, this one has some merit. (But you still don’t have to be a dick about it.)

You know, what with fire erasing everything and giving you a clean slate to start over, I wonder if it might not be a good idea to incinerate the Internet. Just a thought.



*I wrote this without noticing the pun. I am leaving it in because I have no shame.