Rebuilding Notre Dame

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, December 28th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

In this season, between the end of one year, and the beginning of another, our thoughts often turn to building and rebuilding. Our next story is about rebuilding something significant: The Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. A fire in April of 2019 destroyed the wooden roof and the spire. Experts say the whole structure was within minutes of complete collapse when firefighters finally put out the blaze.

EICHER: The day after the fire, while embers were still smoldering, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to rebuild the historic church in five years. That was ambitious, given the original construction took over 100 years! But now two and a half years later, efforts are well underway. WORLD European Correspondent Jenny Lind Schmitt recently met a man involved in the project.

AUDIO: [CROWD GROANS AS SPIRE FALLS]

JENNY LIND SCHMITT, CORRESPONDENT: Gauthier Corbat watched with the rest of the world as flames engulfed Notre Dame de Paris.

AUDIO: [SIRENS AND FIREHOSES]

CORBAT: The day after the cathedral burned, the Groupe Charloit in France made a call and offered the wood to reconstruct the cathedral. I heard the call on the radio and I thought, I’d like to be involved in this project.

Gauthier Corbat is part of the Corbat Group, a four-generation sawmill company in Switzerland. The mill is in a village only three kilometers from the border with France.

Transnational cooperation in the wood industry has been important since the days when Gauthier’s great-grandfather ran the mill. So it was natural for Corbat to offer his company’s resources for the project. But rebuilding quickly became a matter of French expertise and resources.

CORBAT: France is the only country which is really capable of offering, so beautiful oaks. It's really the country of oaks, so it's also for France, it’s important, I think that the wood and these oaks come from the country.

Directors of the rebuild project chose trees in forests across France. Offers from several other countries were politely but firmly declined, dashing Corbat’s hopes of having Swiss wood represented. But he kept calling and sending messages to project leaders. Finally the Corbat mill was chosen as one of 40 sawmills cutting the logs—and the only one outside France.

CORBAT: The oaks must have a big diameter, at least, I don't know, 60 centimeters. And they must be really also, clean. And for our pieces, we need at least five, six meters. So really clean wood without knots and without any problems.

Out in the yard, Corbat points out a big stack of logs. For each log that is already cut into a beam, there is a backup log set aside, in case something goes wrong.

CORBAT: That’s my last logs for Notre Dame de Paris. So you can see here, we have the detail. Every single log has a number. We find it again on the list, and from Paris. So they exactly know where the log is, so it’s our backup.

The end of each log has a white plastic tag labeled with N-D-P—Notre Dame de Paris—a number and a bar code. That identifies where the tree came from and the specifications for its cut.

The length and weight of the logs is a challenge. The beams are 20 feet long, twice as long as the mill’s usual work. The support structure of their machines are barely long enough.

CORBAT: It was quite challenging because we are talking about big pieces and long pieces. And so something not common for us.

AUDIO: [SAWING]

Cyril Drossard operates the saw that cuts the logs. The enormous industrial bandsaw stands over 13 feet high. Drossard changes the 26-foot long blade every two days at most. He’s worked the saw for 15 years, and he can hear if it’s not cutting straight.

DROSSARD: Si ça dévie ou si ça commence à chanter, je sais que ça ne va pas. Peut être que c'est moi qui va trop vite ou la lame qui va pas.

VOICEOVER: If it deviates, or if the wood starts to sing, I know that something’s wrong. Maybe I’m going too fast or the blade isn’t sharp.

Like many of the mill’s employees, Drossard is French, and he is proud of doing this work for his country.

DROSSARD: C'est exceptionnel. C'était un plaisir de faire ça pour notre pays, la France...

He says it wasn’t any more complicated than the usual work, but he was still nervous about doing it right.

Finally Corbat shows me the cut wood that will become part of Notre Dame. Twenty-five massive beams lie out in the middle of the sawmill yard. Each is 8-and-a-half inches by 8 and-a-half inches, and 21 feet long. Each one weighs about 700 pounds.

The freshly cut wood smells sweet: a mixture of vanilla and tobacco. Each piece has the white plastic barcode tag that was on the tree, but now it also has a pink tag that tells where that piece will go in the cathedral.

CORBAT: The pieces are here. They will dry and within 6 or 7 months the carpenters will come here and check the quality and check that everything goes well.

After curing here for a year, the beams will head to Paris. These beams cut by the Corbat sawmill will rebuild the famous cathedral spire.

CORBAT: After that the job of the carpenters in Paris—they will do it in the cathedral directly—they have to make the cuts. It’s like a puzzle.

The pieces are cut several inches longer than needed, because wood ends tend to crack slightly in the natural drying process. On the end of piece number 001985, a two-inch chip of wood is separating from the beam. Corbat says that’s normal and tears off the piece.

JLS: There’s a little piece coming off here.

GC: It’s completely normal.

JLS: Can I have it?

GC: Yes, of course, it’s a nice souvenir.

JLS: I’m going to save it forever!

Corbat studied art history at university before rejoining the family business.

AUDIO: [NOTRE DAME BELLS TOLLING]

That background gives him immense respect for the original builders and their work.

CORBAT: So three generations of people in the 13th century worked actually on the cathedral. So it means that the people who were at that time in the forest to select the wood, to select the timber, they didn't see the cathedral and they didn't see the wood in the cathedral.

He is amazed at being able to play a small part in the rebuild project. And he hopes it leads others to a similar respect.

CORBAT: But I hope the public in general. They will realize how important it is to protect the wood, and to protect our forests.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Lind Schmitt in Vendlincourt, Switzerland.

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