Notre-Dame de Paris fire (2019)

On April 15, 2019, early in the evening, an alarm goes off in the roof space of Notre-Dame de Paris; a little over an hour later, Viollet-le-Duc's spire collapses through the vault, and the medieval timber roof goes up in smoke. The cathedral has belonged to the State since the 1905 law, and the State, its own insurer, carried no property insurance on it. No indemnity, then: the rebuilding was paid for by donations, about 846 million euros, and run by a public body set up after a law of July 2019. The cathedral reopens on December 7 and 8, 2024. The underwriter takes two readings from it. The first concerns the worksite. The spire was under scaffolding for a restoration, and a worksite on a monument still in use changes the fire risk: temporary electrical installations, hot work, crowds of people in the roof space. The contractors on site carry liability cover, and their insurer is the natural target of recourse for an owner with no property insurer. That still takes a proven cause: the investigation leaned toward an accident, a cigarette butt or an electrical fault, without deciding, and with no established cause the recourse has nothing to stand on. The second concerns the fundraising. Pledges from large fortunes announced within hours served as capital, but with no contract: their amount, timing and allocation were debated, which a property policy would have settled through its clauses. The Crown of Thorns and the main works were carried out that evening by a chain of firefighters and staff, which limited the loss to contents. Not to be confused with State self-insurance as a general principle, which the entry of that name describes, nor with a contractors' all risks policy, which covers the works in progress and reaches the existing monument only through an existing-structures extension.