Crowds in Paris gathered near Notre Dame Cathedral to sing “Ave Maria” on Monday, as amassive fire consumed parts of the structure.
In numerous videos posted to Twitter, onlookers can be seen standing together on bridges with views of theworld-famous churchas it burned in the distance.
“The crowd singing ‘Ave Maria’ in one of the bridges in Paris that overlooks#NotreDame in flames,” one user wrote alongside a video of a massive crowd that had broken out in a beautiful rendition of the hymn.
“This is heartbreaking,” another wrote alongside a shared livestream of the groups from World News. “Crowds sing Ave Maria outside of the burning Notre-Dame in Paris.”
After news broke that the Paris landmark was on fire, pedestrians began flooding the streets to watch the blaze, and many were in tears, a Paris resident tells PEOPLE. Twitter users also documented the scene.
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“It feels like the end of the world,”one user wrote. “It’s getting worse. But the fire brigade has turned up. Hard to see how [to] tackle this. The plume of smoke is already 100s of feet long.”
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French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly canceled a speech he had scheduled for Monday night and went to the scene. He then left to meet with French police, according to theWashington Post.
“Our Lady of Paris in flames. Emotion of a whole nation. Thoughts for all Catholics and for all French,” he wrote of the fire in a tweet translated from French. “Like all our countrymen, I’m sad tonight to see this part of us burn.”
As of 11:20 p.m. local time, the main structure of the building had been saved from “total destruction,” according to a fire official’sstatement to CNBC.
Earlier in the evening, the towering spire of the cathedral had collapsed, and the fire had spread to one of its iconic rectangular towers.
The official told CNBC that one firefighter had been “seriously injured” battling the blaze.
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source: people.com
