Category: disasters

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 31, 2025 • 8:15 am

As I’ve recounted before, reader Robert Lang‘s home and studio burned down in the Los Angeles-area wildfires earlier this year. Not only that, but he and his wife Diane had a new home under construction a block or so away in Altadena, and that burned down, too (the older house hadn’t yet been sold).  The New Yorker did an article on the disaster (Robert lost nearly every item in his personal origami collection), which you can read here if you subscribe. Robert and Diane are now living in a rented house nearby, and I have to say that, having had dinner with them when I was in L.A., they have a remarkably sanguine attitude towards it, which I much admire. They will of course rebuild the home and studio as soon as the city permits.

Robert sent in some photos of the damage, along with a narrative, that I’ll put below. His words are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

RWP: Death and Life in Altadena

As readers of this website may know, on January 7–8, the Los Angeles area town of Altadena was destroyed by the Eaton Fire, which was driven by 60–100 mph Santa Ana winds. (It was one of several fires that day—another big one, the Palisades Fire, laid similar waste to the town of Pacific Palisades). The Eaton Fire began near the boundary of suburb and wildland, but the winds drove it both miles into Altadena and miles across the front range of the San Gabriel mountains. Across the mountains, it turned the dense but dry chapparal-covered ridges and canyons into bare dirt and rock studded with tiny blackened stumps of the formerly lush vegetation.

The San Gabriels (and, for that matter, most areas of Southern California) are lands of extremes; just a month later, on February 13, an atmospheric river barreled into town, dropping in some places 12 inches of rain in 24 hours (one of those places being the rain gauge of my neighbor, one of the lucky few who survived the fire). The downpour sent black torrents of water and debris flows roaring down the now denuded canyons and carved channels through fans of debris that poured down the mountainsides (*), damaging—and in many places, completely erasing—the network of hiking trails that were used by tens of thousands of hikers each week, including myself. My (now former) studio backed up to the Angeles National Forest and I had gone hiking almost every day; photos from my hikes and from my trail cams at and near my studio have been occasional RWP entries in recent years.

The Forest Service has closed a large portion of the Angeles National Forest, the burned area and then some. Alas, we’re not allowed to see, or even go repair, any of the damage in the ANF for at least a year. However, one of the organizations that I volunteer with, the Arroyo Foothills Conservancy, has their own inholding in the ANF, and our trail maintenance team recently did a reconnaissance of their property and trails. There was devastation; but there was also new life, welcome signs of both resilience and recovery.

The start of the trail—if you can call it that. This hillside had been covered with a dense thicket of laurel sumac (Malosma laurina), California buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum), black sage (Salvia mellifera), California sagebrush (Artemisia californica), and much else. Not much left. Once the vegetation is gone, there is nothing to stop the downpours from cutting deeply into the dirt that is left. That gully to the left used to be a road that the trail ran along:

Last year, an Eagle Scout project posted old-fashioned metal signs at all the trail junctions. The metal is still there. The trail is visible here and goes to the left of the burned tree where debris has restored the original slope. But there’s a dusting of greenery; after the rains, the plants immediately start to come back:

A Whipple yucca (Hesperoyucca whipplei ), resprouting. All of the leaves had been burned off, so the green you see is all new growth:

Looking up the hillside. There’s a trail weaving back and forth under all that deeply gullied loose gravel:

We were the first people to try to follow the trail since the fire and rain, but someone, or rather, something, had been there ahead of us; these are hoofprints of the California mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus californicus). The deer were already hard at work recreating their own trails. Of course, many of the original hiking trails had followed trails made by the indigenous Tongva—who had, in turn, initially followed animal trails long ago.

California sagebrush (Artemisia californica), coming back:

The denuded hills. You can see some of the surviving trails as light lines on the hills:

There are several species of live oak in California (I don’t know which one this is). They evolved with fire and even with their leaves and small branches toasted, they resprout almost immediately. A large oak in the San Gabriels has likely been through many fires. Sadly, the one way that fire can kill even a large oak is when it’s coming from a house next to the tree; many of the hundred-year-old oaks in the neighborhoods of Altadena will be lost because of the hot and long-burning torches of the houses that were next to them:

Another “oak”—which is not at all an oak—is Poison oak (Toxicodendron diversilobum), a shrub, vine, or bush that is highly variable in form, widespread in the San Gabriels, and the bane of hikers due to the incredibly itchy rash it induces in most people who have the misfortune to brush against it. Its leaves turn bright red in the fall, but the new shoots are also brilliant, as seen here. Yes, it’s an irritant (at least to primates), but the deer love to eat it, and it’s an important source of browse for them:

New lush grass is springing up all over this hillside. Unfortunately, it’s a noxious invasive. Fountain grass (Cenchrus setaceum), an escapee from landscaping, outcompetes the local natives and is also fire-adapted; sadly, once established, it is close to impossible to eradicate. It will quickly dominate this hillside:

I like how the branching of the gullies mirrors the branching of the dead bushes, probably laurel sumac (Malosma laurina). Laurel sumac is incredibly resilient; I had several in the meadow behind my studio. I cut them down to the ground every spring for fire abatement, and by the next spring they’re four feet tall again. They’re just now burned off, but they, like the ones you see here, will be dense bushes again within a year:

Many animals died in the fires, but many survived; the herbivores are dining on the fresh young shoots, and the carnivores are dining on the herbivores. Our neighborhood trail cams have picked up coyote, bobcat, and even a mountain lion since the fire. We saw plenty of deer sign on our reconnaissance, and at the end, saw the source of some of the prints. This was shot with an iPhone at a distance, so it’s not particularly high resolution, but it is a nice reminder that Nature recovers and provides some inspiration for the rest of us Altadenans to go and do likewise:

(*) For an excellent overview of the cycle of fire and flood in L.A., see John McPhee’s New Yorker article “Los Angeles Against the Mountains,” collected in his 1989 book, The Control of Nature.

A reader loses his family home and studio in the fire

January 14, 2025 • 11:30 am

Regulars at this site will surely know of Robert Lang, physicist and origami master (art website here) whom I met a while back at the Kent Presents meetings. We became friendly and thereafter he contributed both wildlife photos and origami photos to this website (see all his posts here).

I was scheduled to meet Robert and his wife Diane today after the meetings and get a tour of their home and studio (she’s an author), thereafter then sallying forth to dinner. I hadn’t seen Robert in years, and had never met Diane, so I was looking forward to visiting their digs and to seeing some of the famous origami.

The problem was that their home and studio were in Altadena, California, near Los Angeles, so you can guess what I’m going to say next.

The home and studio are no more, taken down by wildfire. But I’ll let Robert tell the tale. His words, printed with permission, are indented below, and are supplemented with narrated videos (there are even subtitles).  This is the story of a family who lived through the fire but lost everything—except for the most important things: their lives and their animals.

Note that they actually lost two houses, as they had just bought another down the street.

Late Tuesday afternoon, we heard about the Eaton Fire, which started over in Eaton Canyon, about 2 miles to our east and several ridges over. The initial reports were that the wind was driving the fire to the east (away from us), so we were hopeful. At about 6:30 pm, though, my neighbor texted the neighborhood group that he saw a glow over the ridge to our east, and I headed up to my studio to see. By 7:30 pm I saw the fire crest that ridge and we received the “evacuate NOW” notice, so I threw as much as I could grab into my car and headed down, while my wife did the same from our home (with the dogs, tortoises, snake, and tarantula that live with us).

We spent the next few hours driving and parking to try to watch things from a distance. Surprisingly, the evacuation zone ended just to the west of our neighborhood, so after a while, I started making my way to the edge of the zone, staying out of the way of the many emergency vehicles, and presently found a spot from which I could walk to the edge of the canyon that separated me from my studio. From there, I could see the studio; I could also see that the entire multi-thousand-foot mountainside above it was in sheets of flame. The wind was blasting through the canyons, driving 50-foot plumes of flame and embers horizontally. About 1:30 am, I saw a flare-up right at the studio, and within about 10 minutes, it was engulfed. I also realized about that time that the fire would likely take down the telephone poles (and thus, potentially live wires) along my route, so I beat a hasty retreat to my car, and before long, the authorities announced that our area was now evacuation zone. We drove down the hill to Pasadena, found a quiet neighborhood out of the smoke (and, we hoped, the path of the fire), and spent a fitful rest of the night in our cars, awaiting what the morning would bring.

In the morning, my wife stayed with the animals and I drove up the hill to see what became of our house. Major roads were blocked off, but I wove through the neighborhoods, dodging still-burning homes (though the worst was past), downed wires, downed trees, and random debris, until I could get up to my neighborhood. It was a zone of total devastation: nearly all homes burned–and definitely mine. (Actually, both of ours; we had just moved down the street, so both our old house–just moved out of–and the new house–just moved into–were leveled.) I made my way up to my studio at the top of the hill, passing street after street of nothing but smoldering ruins. When I made it up, I found something incredible: the row of houses below my studio had entirely survived! I texted their owners the good news. I could see, though, that my studio had not; I parked (debris blocked my driveway), walked up, and surveyed the destruction, took a few videos and pictures for records, then high-tailed it down the hill.

Right now, the estimates are that 7000 structures were damaged or destroyed. It looks like about 2/3 of Altadena is gone. There’s a lot of snark on the internets about the rich people/celebrities/influencers in Pacific Palisades losing their houses. I haven’t seen similar snark about Altadena, which is a mixed-class, mixed-race community. There are turn-of-the-century buildings, craftsman houses, bungalows, tiny starter homes, and yes, a few mansions left over from the days when it was the summer playground of the rich. My wife grew up here; her father built their house himself in the 40s after clearing the orange groves from the parcel he bought. On the main drag downtown, the local hardware store was where you ran into your neighbors; Fox’s Restaurant had been a local landmark since 1955. All that is gone.

Ironically, I had recently returned from a business trip to Dresden, Germany, which was (famously) fire-bombed and leveled in WWII. They rebuilt. So will we. But it will be a long road to recovery.

*****************

Here a Cal Fire map of fire damage. The damaged area covers about 2/3 of Altadena. My home and studio is in the top middle of the burned civilized area, just to the left of the vertical black bar on the map.

This map is an understatement; I know some of the areas shown in gray actually burned.

Here are a few of the videos Robert posted on his YouTube site:

Panorama of the fire from the studio:

View of the mountains from the house:

Views of the destroyed house:

Views of the destroyed studio:

From Robert:

Here’s one more image for you: house-by-house fire damage. I’ve annotated where my places were. Not much left of the neighborhood.

[The key to above]: red=burned, black = OK, amber=damaged, green=“affected” (whatever that means).

Distance-wise, the studio and the houses are about a half mile apart by road, less by walking (there’s a trail up the canyon). An easy walk, except for the elevation gain (studio is about 200’ higher in elevation), so I usually drove.

Click to enlarge:  Arrows: studio is at the top, the old house at lower center, and the new house at lower right.  I’m struck by the patchy locations of the houses that survived.

As you can tell from the narration, Robert appears remarkably calm about this, as he was in his email to me about the destruction, which was headed “change of plans.”  I would be wailing with grief! But Robert and I do have one thing in common: a compulsion to document. His is with words and videos, mine involves in putting them on this site.

Best of luck, Robert and Diane, and of course we’re all sorry for your loss.

Where were you on 9/11?

September 10, 2021 • 12:00 pm

If you’re old enough to remember the assassination of John F. Kennedy, you surely remember exactly where you were when you heard about it. I was in junior high school, and the incident was announced over the public address system. When I walked home from school, cars were pulled over on the side of the road with the radios on, and people were standing outside those cars listening to the news through the open windows. Everyone was discombobulated for months.

Now all of us lived through 9/11, and I also remember where I was then. We always listened to the radio while doing flies in the lab (the radio was on the lab bench where up to four people had their microscopes), and the news came on that something had happened to one of the World Trade Center towers. I happened to have an old black and white television in the lab, and we quickly set it up on the bench and sat around watching the news.

There was no more thought of flies, because soon thereafter the second tower was hit, as was the Pentagon, and then there were rumors of a plane crashing in Pennsylvania. (Later we found out about the brave people who tried to breach the cockpit and caused the plane to crash.) The news continued for days, and eventually we found out what happened, and that got us into war.

The funny thing is, I can’t remember how I felt after the attacks, except for a pity for those who died (the “jumpers” broke my heart) and a burning desire to know what happened.  Nearly three thousand people died that day, as opposed to one during the JFK assassination, and 9/11 was so much closer to the present than was 1963. But my memories of the atmosphere—of what it was like on the street, or in school—are far more vivid from 1963.

This is, of course, a request that readers recount their own experiences on this day twenty years ago.

Here’s something that conveys both the attacks and what was happening on the street in New York City.

Camus on the plague, and de Botton gets the vector wrong

March 19, 2020 • 12:30 pm

Ah, we have’t heard from Alain de Botton for a while, and I haven’t missed him (see all my posts on him here). He was always a faitheist, an atheist-butter, and an arduous advocate for atheist churches, which I don’t particularly object to but also don’t feel we need. de Botton is also patronizing: the kind of guy who thinks he sees some great truths about the universe that others have missed—and lets us know that (see here).  Now, after a six-year hiatus from the man, he’s back on my site, not because his new New York Times op-ed has anything particularly interesting to say, but because, when writing about Camus’s great Novel The Plague, seems to get the infectious microbe wrong.

La Peste is in vogue again these days because of the coronavirus pandemic, as people read it trying to discern if there any lessons for the present peril.

And so de Botton tries to give us some lessons. His point appears to be that the “absurdity of life” on view in the novel is not that our lives are intrinsically absurd, but that we are susceptible to the vagaries of fate, which supposedly makes our lives meaningless. Here, I think, is de Botton’s gist:

For Camus, when it comes to dying, there is no progress in history, there is no escape from our frailty. Being alive always was and will always remain an emergency; it is truly an inescapable “underlying condition.” Plague or no plague, there is always, as it were, the plague, if what we mean by that is a susceptibility to sudden death, an event that can render our lives instantaneously meaningless.

This is what Camus meant when he talked about the “absurdity” of life. Recognizing this absurdity should lead us not to despair but to a tragicomic redemption, a softening of the heart, a turning away from judgment and moralizing to joy and gratitude.

“The Plague” isn’t trying to panic us, because panic suggests a response to a dangerous but short-term condition from which we can eventually find safety. But there can never be safety — and that is why, for Camus, we need to love our fellow damned humans and work without hope or despair for the amelioration of suffering. Life is a hospice, never a hospital.

At the height of the contagion, when 500 people a week are dying, a Catholic priest called Paneloux gives a sermon that explains the plague as God’s punishment for depravity. But Dr. Rieux has watched a child die and knows better: Suffering is randomly distributed, it makes no sense, it is simply absurd, and that is the kindest thing one can say of it.

Well, I am not a Camus expert, though I have read the novel, but I can’t speak to whether Camus’s view of life’s absurdity is simply that we all die and can never know when.  Whether that makes our lives “instantaneously meaningless” is debatable, because, in the long view, life can be seen as meaningless regardless of whether it ends instantly or in a drawn-out process.  Yes, Camus is right that there’s no sign of God in the depredations of infectious disease, but that’s Camus’s point, not de Botton’s.

In fact, after reading de Botton’s piece twice, I still can’t see why he felt it worth writing, or why the NYT found it worth publishing. I suppose that if you’re out of bogroll in these parlous times, you could use his essay.

What interested me, though, was de Botton’s first paragraph (my emphasis):

In January 1941, Albert Camus began work on a story about a virus that spreads uncontrollably from animals to humans and ends up destroying half the population of “an ordinary town” called Oran, on the Algerian coast. “The Plague,” published in 1947, is frequently described as the greatest European novel of the postwar period.

VIRUS???? If you remember the story, the vector is carried by rats, and although I don’t know if the disease is named as bubonic plague, it’s very clear that Camus was writing about bubonic plague. And bubonic plague is carried not by a virus, but by a bacterium, Yersina pestis. Indeed, in the quote below, Camus explicitly refers to the cause as a bacillus (bacterium).

Some judicious fact-checking by both the author and the NYT would have been useful here. But that’s not the Times‘s forte these days, what with their claim that the American Revolution was fought to defend slavery.

In the meantime, here’s the great ending of Camus’s novel (originally written in French, of course):

And, indeed, as he listened to the cries of joy rising from the town, Rieux remembered that such joy is always imperiled.

He knew what those jubilant crowds did no know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.

I don’t know who the translator was, but he rendered Camus’s words into wonderful English: I love the alliteration of “rouse up its rats” and “bide”, “bedrooms”, “bookshelves” and “bane”, and the bittersweet last sentence. This is great writing and great translating. de Botton is not great writing.

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 11, 2019 • 7:45 am

Reader Chris Taylor from Canberra sends us some animal pictures, but also some distressing picture of the fires that are destroying Australia’s animals and its forests. His notes are indented:

Earlier this year, to get away from the Canberra winter, I spent six weeks on a working trip to a Bush Heritage Australia nature reserve on the Atherton Tablelands of Far North Queensland.  I have some photos that you might be able to use.

These first ones are of a Lumholtz’s tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus lumholtzi) family that I saw on the Atherton Tablelands. This is one of two species of tree kangaroo found in Australia; the other species are from New Guinea and surrounding islands. It’s odd to think of a kangaroo living in the canopy of the rain forest, but they are quite adept at getting about in the trees.  The Tree Kangaroos probably share a common ancestry with the Rock Wallabies, and have evolved features to help them: long tails for balance, long claws on the front feet (you can see the claws on the female in the first photo) and soft pads on the hind feet to give grip on the branches.

Mother and joey:

Adult male:
Joey on the left, female and male hidden in the leaves:

And the terrible fires:

There’s no wildlife in these, but a few photos of the bushfires in New South Wales.  I am a member of the RFS (Rural Fire Service) and have been out to a few of the fires.  Most of the time I don’t get a chance to take photos, but here are a few.

As of Monday, bushfires have burnt out a total of over 2.7 million hectares (about 10,600 square miles) in New South Wales alone this year, and there are over 100 fires still active, covering over 2 million hectares.  There has been one burning close to home for almost two weeks, so my brigade has been very active in trying to get it under control. The first photo is how it looked from home on 29 November. Two days later, I was out on the fireground helping with logistics. The second and third photos show the extent of the smoke.

 

Also included two photos from an earlier trip.  A waterbombing helicopter in the smoke at Gum Scrub, and fire in the forest at night near Long Flat.

Media, relieved that Notre Dame relics were saved, acts as if they were real

April 16, 2019 • 9:15 am

The fire at Notre Dame is out, and much of the main building was spared, though it will take years, if ever, to bring it back to where it was before. I’m not sure about the status of its famous stained-glass windows, though one photo seems to show that a big one is gone, for, after all, the glass was held together with easily-melted lead. The cause of the disaster has not been determined, and may never be.

All in all, it’s not the disaster I feared; here’s what it looks like today:

Photo from the NY Times. Thibault Camus/Associated Press

President Macron has pledged that it will be rebuilt, and private donors have already given millions to that purpose, with the LVMH Group having donated 200 million Euros.

While I was watching the news last night, they had a special report from a correspondent who was talking about whether the artwork and relics had been saved. She was especially concerned that Jesus’s crown of thorns had been recovered, and I’d forgotten that that relic was even in the Cathedral. In fact, the Cathedral also contains not only a nail supposedly used to secure Jesus to the cross, but a piece of the True Cross itself. The chances that these are real are miniscule; I suspect that if there was a “True Cross”, the pieces of it preserved in various places would be much larger than any execution cross.

On this morning’s local news, an anchor was especially excited that the cross on the altar had been preserved, clearly implying that this was the work of God. She didn’t discuss why God allowed the Cathedral to burn but saved the cross.

At any rate, here’s how CNN reported on these relics:

The cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris is home to scores of priceless artifacts, artwork and relics collected over the centuries, each with their own story.

As a devastating fire tore through the revered Gothic cathedral on Monday, toppling its spire, many feared these treasures might be lost forever.

The Crown of Thorns, which some believe was placed on the head of Jesus and which the cathedral calls its “most precious and most venerated relic,” was rescued from the fire, according to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

“We managed to protect the most precious treasures in a safe place,” a Paris City Hall spokesperson told CNN.

However it has not been confirmed whether individual items such as a fragment of the True Cross and one of the Holy Nails were saved.

Granted, the Crown of Thorns is qualified by saying that “some believe it was placed on the head of Jesus”, but the fragment of the True Cross and one of the Holy Nails are presented as if they were real relics. And the reporter on NBC Nightly News certainly didn’t qualify these relics.

Even the New York Times didn’t hedge that much:

While one treasure, a relic of the crown of thorns said to have been worn by Jesus during his crucifixion, was saved, the status of other historic items is unclear.

Yes, the crown was “said to have been worn by Jesus”, but the fact of Jesus’s crucifixion (much less the identity of the Jesus person) is not established historically. The “other historic items”, like the nail that went through Jesus, aren’t “historic” in the sense that their provenance is established, but only in that they were historically seen by the credulous as being real.

Perhaps I’m being overly captious, but the chances are very high that these relics are dubious; it’s as if the press reported “It has not been confirmed whether the runner from Santa’s sleigh was saved.” Wikipedia lists over a dozen related relics, either individual thorns from the Crown of Thorns or fragments of the entire crown, preserved at various places.  Like the Shroud of Turin and many other relics of Jesus, these are fakes, products of a Jesus-relic industry in the Middle Ages.

Here’s the supposed Crown preserved in a gold reliquary at Notre Dame:

Another view (could there be Jesus’s DNA on it from bloodstains?):

Reuters: Philippe Wojazer

As for the crucifixion nails, it’s true that nails have been found in tombs in Israel that were driven through bone, and were likely used in crucifixions, but none of these has been identified as a Jesus Nail (and how could it be given that his bones would have gone missing?), and there are at least three separate crucifixions involved.  Here’s a nail that was driven through the hand:

Here’s the “Holy Nail” from Notre Dame:

(Photo by: Godong/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Re the piece of the True Cross, well, let’s start with some carbon dating on that.

Here’s a tweet from a global news agency failing to qualify the “Crown of Thorns” although it does hedge on St. Louis’s tunic. And of course the artefacts are replaceable; you just cobble together another crown out of dried twigs.

I’m not trying to be churlish here, but just reporting how religious myths subtly become reinforced by the press.  (Caveat: some places, including the Guardian, hedges all these relics with an indication that they’re “believed to be real”.) At any rate, the value and beauty of Notre Dame, which are undeniable, are to me completely independent of the truth of Christian mythology, which I see as false. The Rose Windows are infinitely more valuable to our culture than a nail of dubious origin. But such is faith.

Notre Dame severely damaged; roof collapses: cathedral may be forever lost

April 15, 2019 • 3:00 pm

Well, the roof of Notre Dame collapsed in the fire and the damage is horribly severe. There’s a timely report at The New York Times (click on screenshot below):

They still don’t know how the fire started, but here’s what the NYT says:

André Finot, a spokesman for the cathedral, said in a telephone interview that the cause of the fire remained unknown, and there was no immediate indication that anyone had been hurt.

“It’s not about the faith — Notre-Dame is a symbol of France,” said Emmanuel Guary, a 31-year-old actor who was among a huge crowd amassed on the Rue Rivoli, on the Right Bank. Many had tears in their eyes.

After part of the spire collapsed, the fire appeared to spread across the rooftop, where the growing flames licked the sky and projected a yellow smoke over the horizon.

. . . The French police rushed in and started blowing whistles, telling everyone to move back, witnesses said. By then, the flames were towering, spilling out of multiple parts of the cathedral. Tourists and residents alike came to a standstill, pulling out their phones to call their loved ones. Older Parisians began to cry, lamenting how their national treasure was quickly being lost.

. . .Vincent Dunn, a fire consultant and former New York City fire chief, said that fire hose streams could not reach the top of such a cathedral, and that reaching the top on foot was often an arduous climb over winding steps.

“These cathedrals and houses of worship are built to burn,” he said. “If they weren’t houses of worship, they’d be condemned.”

Apparently they couldn’t do a forest-fire-like drop of water from the air, as that, they say, might have caused the entire edifice to collapse. There will be plenty of recriminations in the next week. I’m just unspeakably sad. Yes, it was a religious structure, but that doesn’t detract from its historical significance, its beauty, and the emotional effect it has on many (including me).

The pictures and videos below show the fire in the interior, and that probably means that the stained-glass windows, the choir, and other works of art are destroyed. It will never be the same again.

Some photos:

Credit Charles Platiau/Reuters

This is such a sad picture:

Credit Thibault Camus/Associated Press
Francois Guillot/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images