Thread by @pighilltweets

Seeing the events unfold on the Île de la Cité this afternoon / evening, It's hard not to fall into despair ( I know, as could feel it happening to me) There is no doubt this is a heartbreaking & catastrophic loss.
But...
#NotreDame

if we can light a candle from these embers, it's that we will rebuild.
All those acres of lost medieval timber, well carpenters now will look at them anew. Masons will scribe sections and profiles, from books made by masons 200 years before them.

Archives will be scoured, old photos minutely examined for details not recorded elsewhere, people familiar with a building that has towered over them for their entire life, will look backwards, and tease out its form form from records, and elevations.

People who may never would have otherwise are now going to spend parts of their careers, plumbing the depths and mysteries of this building that has already absorbed uncountable hours of life before theirs, Old Crafts will be honed, some skills rarely used will be passed on.

This is tragedy, yes undoubtedly, but a young carpenter will now plane timbers for a building that might stand another 800 years, masons will re carve faces for gargoyles that will hopefully look over Paris into the NEXT millennium.

Would that it never happened, I wish it was so. But but has, and what's left now is what we grow from it.
The people of France have proven time and again that they are equal to a challenge like this.

And the chance to combine ancient skills with high technology, mallets and laser scans, to assess again the enormous effort of the medieval people who faced their task with means so different to ours. That's all we can take into tomorrow.
#NotreDamedeParis

And in the morning, while it's bad. It's nowhere near as catastrophic as it appeared last night.
Never more thankful to see light tinted by those colours.