What a nightmare.
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When limestone reaches 900 C it burns.
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Judging by the lack of roof and fire direction in some of these other photos, it looks like it collapsed into the apse, too.
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This is an incalculable loss. All that history, going up in smoke. 
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I hope the rabbits are OK. (They’re in the hutch ‘back o’ Notre Dame.)
Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
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Absolutely. Even if you’re not a fan of the Catholic Church this is a cultural loss on par with Giza losing the Pyramid of Khufu. Devastating.
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Damn, that’s a horrible loss.
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It wasn’t deliberate, but culturally on par with the Taliban blowing up the Buddhist statues. 
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I’m sure that America’s Christians will be sending an emergency donation of thoughts and prayers.
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It was built in 1345. That is incomprehensible from an American viewpoint. Here, my house is considered old because it was built in the 1940s.
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Damn. I expect they’ll rebuild again. I had no idea it had been bebuilt in the 1800s! After this the whole place will feel like Alcatraz Island…
Alternatively, daaaaaaamnnnnn Castlevania season 3 really starts off dramatically!
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Aw man… that totally sucks 
I hope they rebuild it. I know it was in a state of disrepair and they were fixing it up.
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The building has been extensively researched and scanned over the years so, it’s not implausible.
One example:
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One of my dream-plans is to visit every significant European cathedral housing working pipe organs. ND was at the top of my list.
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Roof and spire gone, so that does not bode well for the rose windows or the many non-granite details inside.
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Seriously, my classmates and I went to Paris in the mid-80’s and our art professor gave us a tour of Notre Dame. It’s an amazing structure, and seeing it burn down is awful.
(At that time you could walk up to the top of one of the two bell towers to get an amazing view of Paris. And there wasn’t any railing to keep you from falling off.)
ETA: The live streams on YouTube are… depressing, for lack of a better word. The building looks like a shell. It’s still burning.
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It wasn’t. I was there last May. There had been major restoration campaign between 1991 and 2000.
The famous stained glass windows are probably gone. This is awful.
crappy iPhone pictures I made
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Disrepair may be the wrong word. But it needed repairs. I remember reading more than one article about it:
ETA - It looks like now it will take a lot to restore it - but it can and should be done.
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