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Notre-Dame came closer to collapsing than people knew
- acqq 7y agoThe part interesting for us: “The fire warning system at Notre-Dame took dozens of experts six years to put together, and in the end involved thousands of pages of diagrams, maps, spreadsheets and contracts, according to archival documents found in a suburban Paris library by The Times. The result was a system so arcane that when it was called upon to do the one thing that mattered — warn “fire!” and say where — it produced instead a nearly indecipherable message.” The message (assembled): “Attic Nave Sacristy.” “ZDA-110-3-15-1” “aspirating framework”
- 9dev 7y agoThat's really a textbook example of software projects going horribly wrong. It's often a good idea to take a step back and analyze whether you're overcomplicating things. Often when working on a concept, you're too deep in to see the simple solutions anymore.
- donkeyd 7y agoI've been in projects like this, where I asked 'shouldn't we show this in human readable text?" The response would be that everyone knows the codes, so no. In those cases it was the client deciding a less than optimal solution even though I as a developer proposed something that, I think, was better.
- nolok 7y agoBeer testing has never looked saner than when faced with monstruosities like that. Been using it since I learned of it on HN and it's impressive the number of times it makes you take a step back and realize you were getting lost between you and yourself.
- arethuza 7y ago"Beer testing" - usability testing after consumption of quantities of beer??
- nolok 7y agoTake your project, whatever it is, on a laptop. go to the nearest pub or bar, not the drunken kind but the calm almost Starbuck like. Find someone in the range of who your average user is, and offer to pay them a beer if they agree to use your interface to do some simple task on it for five minute while you take notes and record the screen. It's a sort-of game for them, short enough that it won't be a hassle, and they get a free beer out of it 'it's inexpensive for you and will reveal some obvious issues faster than a team of dedicated qa tester can ever hope to be. Here it would be a simple "here is the alarm you get, identify what is the problem and where it is". Given parent post, 5$ and ten minute of beer testing would have told them how terrible it is. Works fine with group too, ensure one person is the dedicated user, and offer to pay their drink tab. Be ready to engage with them if they have question and do not be timid about keeping their drink coming if they so desire, as long as they provide valuable input. It's so obviously stupidly simple, but the result are insane, it's very cheap and you get a perfect case of "how will average person x understand and deal with my software in that situation". (first learned of it on a hn post years ago, adopted it for fun, kept it because it works too well)
- GuB-42 7y agoApparently, it is a different thing. What I thought of was: - State the problem - Get drunk - Find an answer - Sober up - Study the problem again - If you came to the same conclusion as when you were drunk, you are OK.
- perfunctory 7y ago> That's really a textbook example of software projects going horribly wrong. It's often a good idea to take a step back and analyze whether you're overcomplicating things. The question is what to do about it. Simply taking a step back and analyzing is not enough. Most of us have been on the projects that were overcomplicated and knew they were overcomplicated and knew a simpler solution and yet didn't have the power to do anything about it. The ultimate power is to be able to walk away form the project but how many people can afford that? So, I believe the problem is not technical but rather socio-economic. I am not sure how to solve it.
- asark 7y ago> Often when working on a concept, you're too deep in to see the simple solutions anymore. I've seen at least as much stakeholder or designer (backed by stakeholder) ego keeping UX-harming crap in, while plenty of people on the project are very aware of it, despite its being pointed out to them repeatedly. Sometimes they even make you spend more time (money) doing things the wrong way. It's bizarre.
- sgc 7y agoTBF, often times people at the top are there as the result of rejecting others' advice many, many times, and so rejecting advice does not set off alarm bells to them the way it might to most other people.
- lqet 7y agoMakes you wonder if the millions of euros and years (decades) of construction delay caused by the fire alarm system at the BER airport will, in the end, be worth the effort [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Brandenburg_Airport#Construction_failures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Brandenburg_Airport#Con...
- bengale 7y agoThat's an astonishing list of failures.
- ceejayoz 7y agoImagine how many more they'll find when they throw actual human passengers at the place.
- lqet 7y ago> An 11 October 2016 committee session found that motors used to open and close windows do not operate above 30 degrees Celsius and they need to be exchanged. Three thousand smoke detectors went missing, but were later found. Technical issues involving the electric doors became public on 18 January 2017. It was discovered that 80% of the doors would not open, which created concerns around venting of smoke in a fire. The sprinkler system has sustained failures in the south pier. The sprinkler heads were replaced for increased water flow, but the pipes are too thin to withstand the increased water pressure. The roof needs to be opened and the pipes will get exchanged. On 5 March 2017, the transformer station exploded.
- baggy_trough 7y agoWonder why the system didn't call the fire department itself. Why bother with the human element of the guard at all? This is Notre Dame we're talking about.
- userbinator 7y agoToo many false alarms?
- londons_explore 7y agoOne sensor detecting a fire can be a false alarm. More than one sensor detecting a fire is very rarely a false alarm, and really ought to call the fire department.
- giancarlostoro 7y agoDo we know this to be true? If the alarm is going off for a good solid few minutes it might be worth a checkup.
- silvestrov 7y agoMost automatic alarms are false. As far as I remember it's more than 90% in Denmark. Accepting an error rate at 98% for Notre Dame should be a no-brainer.
- perfunctory 7y agoI dunno. Do you want fire trucks sirening through the city blocking traffic every day?
- 0xffff2 7y agoThat's already a fact of life in every large city I've ever been in.
- Johnny555 7y agoThere's a cost for deploying firetrucks, both in dollars and opportunity cost -- when you send 5 trucks to Notre Dame twice a week just in case the alarm is real this time, those trucks and firefighters aren't available to respond to a real fire
- mschuster91 7y agoThe thing is: usually there's a fire plan - firefighters arrive at the building, read the code and look it up in the plan where exactly the trigger (or inlet for the aspiration tube) is. They do this insanely fast as they have been trained for this - while that security guard and the overtired technician were not. This is a lack of training and a procedural failure - the usual configuration/process is that any alarm either automatically calls firefighters/police or via procedure the guard manually does this - immediately, not after 30min.
- dwighttk 7y agoAttic nave sacristy is a location
- kweks 7y agoBut the nave doesn't have a sacristy, and the sacristy doesn't have a nave. Sacristy seems to give the location of where in the nave, which considering that the cathedral is cardinally aligned, is a rather poor choice. "Attic nave south" would have been a perfect description.
- Keysh 7y agoIt really meant something more like "the part of the cathedral complex containing the cathedral's nave, the cathedral's attic, and the sacristy building". The real problem was that both the main cathedral and the sacristy (a separate building adjacent to the cathedral) had attics; either the security employee got confused and told the cathedral guard to check the sacristy's attic, or the guard got confused and decided to do that.
- lbriner 7y agoPerfect unless the guard didn't know which way was south and went to the wrong place. Then maybe the HN elites would be saying, "why not use the location of something unambiguous instead of 'south', like the sacristy building" ;-)
- kweks 7y agoIt's a very, very vague error, and totally understandable that the new guard sent his colleague to the wrong place. We'd expect a phrase to provide more granularity: (or YYYY-MM-DD), and as such, you'd read it exactly as: fire in the attic of the sacristy. The "nave" text is a bit weird, as the sacristy doesn't have a nave, but at the same time, the nave doesn't have a sacristy.
- rimliu 7y agoIn the article, it says that the area was divided into four zones — my reading of this message: fire in the nave attic in sacristy zone. The bunch of numbers is an id of fire detector.
- Keysh 7y agoFrom the article: "First it gave a shorthand description of a zone — the cathedral complex was divided into four — that read “Attic Nave Sacristy.”" So the entire zone is called "Attic Nave Sacristy", and from that all you know is that there's apparently a fire somewhere in that zone -- could be on the floor of the nave, could be in the cathedral attic, could be somewhere in the sacristy building (even in the attic of the sacristy). The irony is that you've made a version of the same mistake that either the security employee or the cathedral guard made -- assuming a specific location within that zone. Yours ("the nave attic") happens to be correct; one or both of them assumed it was "the attic of the sacristy building".
- oftenwrong 7y agoThe article makes it clear that the fire alarm system did warn "fire": >The employee monitoring the smoke alarm panel at Notre-Dame cathedral was just three days on the job when the red warning light flashed on the evening of April 15: “Feu.” Fire. and >Finally, the guard radioed the fire security employee to call the fire department. It was 6:48, 30 minutes after the first red signal lit up the word “Feu.” The message specifying the location of the fire could have been more clear, but the fact that the fire alarm was going off was clear. When you see "Feu" flashing red on the alarm panel, the correct course of action is obvious. The greatest failure was that the guards tried to go find the fire, wasting 30 minutes, instead of just calling the fire brigade immediately. If a tsunami warning is being sounded, would you go down to the beach to try to spot it first, or would you run for the high ground? If a warning of a bombing came, would you go outside with binoculars and try to spot the planes first, or would you run down into the air raid shelter?
- andreasley 7y agoThat probably depends on the training and the frequency of false alarms. If air-raid sirens (which we do have here in Switzerland) would start sounding, nobody would seek shelter, because everyone would consider an attack too unlikely. Of course, in retrospect, it would have been better to call the firefighters first. But to make such consequential decisions three days into a new job requires proper training and clearly defined procedures.
- throw0101a 7y ago> The greatest failure was that the guards tried to go find the fire, wasting 30 minutes, instead of just calling the fire brigade immediately. This is actually standard procedure in many places. Security guards often have x minutes to see if it's a false alarm: * https://gps-securitygroup.com/the-role-of-security-guard-regarding-fire/ https://gps-securitygroup.com/the-role-of-security-guard-reg... Non-residential buildings are often charged for false alarms, so the landlord may wish to first confirm if the fire brigade is actually needed. If you work in an office tower, or live in an apartment or condo, you'll often have multi-stage fire alarm system: you don't actually evacuate unless either (a) it's a confirmed real incident, or (b) the confirmation timeout has been reached.
- seanhandley 7y agoAs someone who has written software that interprets signals from fire alarm panels, I can tell you that it's decipherable if you're trained on the panel model. I suspect the employee, having been on duty only a few days, was not.
- rahkiin 7y ago> “You have a system that is known for its ability to detect very small quantities of smoke,” Mr. Corbett said. “Yet the whole outcome of it is this clumsy human response. You can spend a lot to detect a fire, but it all goes down the drain when you don’t move on it.” It seems to me that the biggest issue with the fire system was the lack of a graphical display of the alarm... with all the security cameras and screens likely to already be in place, why not add one with maps of the cathedral, showing up in red when an alarm triggers? The need to understand shortcodes it waiting for disaster...
- blauditore 7y agoI would guess no prioritization of usability ("it's just an internal tool, we can train people, it's cheaper anyway"). This seems like a common pattern on software projects, especially company-internal ones.
- Someone 7y agoFor an example see https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/13/margaret-hamilton-computer-scientist-interview-software-apollo-missions-1969-moon-landing-nasa-women https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/13/margaret-...: ”I suggested a program change to prevent a prelaunch program being selected during flight. But the higher-ups at MIT and Nasa said the astronauts were too well trained to make such a mistake. Midcourse on the very next mission – Apollo 8 – one of the astronauts on board accidentally did exactly what Lauren had done. The Lauren bug! It created much havoc and required the mission to be reconfigured. After that, they let me put the program change in, all right.”
- briantailor 7y agoThis will be an example to for future fire systems that will be updated in many historical sites
- theon144 7y agoCan I just take a moment to praise the article's presentation? This comes up every time a NYTimes interactive comes out but wow, the narrative flow on this one really is incredible. The animations smoothly transitioning to full text, the collage of socal media posts... It feels much more like watching a documentary than reading an article. I hope this catches on, it's what I've been promised with this whole hypermedia shebang!
- jmalkin 7y agoYeah this is gorgeous I wonder how much it costs them compared to a regular article
- alexghooper 7y agoI work on the dev team who do the equivalent for The Telegraph in the UK - each interactive longform will usually cost £3-£4k in dev time.
- kibwen 7y agoDid you develop in-house tooling to expedite the process or do you mostly begin from a blank slate each time?
- bdamm 7y agoAt that price they must be using tooling.
- alexghooper 7y agoWe have in-house templates pre-built (in Vue.js) with an array of different components available for us to use, so this drastically reduces dev time.
- alexdias 7y agoDo you have any examples of articles like these from the Telegraph?
- james_pm 7y agoInteresting that during the fire, the world was piling on the fire fighting efforts as being insufficient. As the true picture started coming out over the next few days and now with this article, it's clear that the fire fighters had a plan and executed it well, likely saving the structure.
- rags2riches 7y agoEven presidents were giving advice, as I recall...
- greyhair 7y agoJust the stupid ones.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y agoThe world? IIRC it was pretty much just one person...
- JshWright 7y agoThere were a _lot_ of armchair firefighters that day, questioning why there was so little water being (apparently) sprayed on the fire. On reddit especially, I was downvoted heavily for explaining that they were likely making a defensive stand inside the structure (similar comments on HN were well received).
- Raphmedia 7y agoA lot of people on online boards (including HN) were critical of the firefighting efforts.
- JshWright 7y agoIt's definitely interesting to go back and look at the conversation that day. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19666991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19666991
- vnchr 7y agoHave they figured out how the fire started?
- mr_crankypants 7y agoAccording to TFA, no, but they are nearly certain it was accidental. Top candidates include faulty electrical wiring and cigarette butts.
- lutorm 7y agoGiven the prevalence of construction-initiated fires and the risk of fire in that space, I'm really surprised they even allowed smoking there.
- canthonytucci 7y agoSometimes people break rules.
- noir_lord 7y agoAlmost invariably they break rules, that’s why sane systems have redundancies and contingencies for “what do we do when meatsack A fails to follow the rules?”. Sometimes the answer is nothing (the result of the rule break may be minor) other times not.
- mr_crankypants 7y agoThey didn't; it was strictly forbidden. But, also according to TFA, they nonetheless found cigarette butts on the scaffolding.
- mshook 7y agoOk so the UI or procedures sucked but what's really aggravating as a tax payer, at least to me, is the lack of foresight and proper funding where it matters. Though to be honest it's not different from most work environments... Fire is not something new for historical monuments. I heard on the radio right after the collapse an architect saying at least half of fires starting on historical monuments happen during renovations. And quickly searching shows an insurance company saying it could be close to 3/4 of them (https://www.cahiers-techniques-batiment.fr/article/notre-dame-les-travaux-de-renovation-sont-la-cause-de-trois-quart-des-incendies-des-batiments-historiques-claude-delahaye-directeur-de-la-construction-chez-verspieren.40370 https://www.cahiers-techniques-batiment.fr/article/notre-dam...). Sure that wouldn't have fixed everything but now instead of adding a couple of dozens or hundred millions to fund the fire warning system, we're now most likely looking at a cost of multiple billions...
- WalterBright 7y ago> Fire is not something new for historical monuments. I worry about the great libraries being consumed by fire. I do not understand why there isn't a larger effort to digitize them.
- manwe150 7y agoIsn’t part of the problem here copyright, so Congress would need to make it legal? I thought that’s what killed the Google Books effort anyways. That said, I thought the Internet Archive is still engaged in an ambitious project to scan many books (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_scanning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_scanning).
- WalterBright 7y agoThings like the Vatican Library, which are full of old manuscripts that are centuries out of copyright and nobody even really knows what's all there.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago> Sure that wouldn't have fixed everything but now instead of adding a couple of dozens or hundred millions to fund the fire warning system, we're now most likely looking at a cost of multiple billions... But was lack of funds really the root cause of the problem? If anything, the overcomplicated nature of the fire warning system seemed to have all the hallmarks of having too much money thrown at it and too many "cooks in the kitchen" designing it.
- rdl 7y agoSaved thanks to 1) God 2) brave individual front-line firefighters. Almost lost due to: 1) Bad UX 2) Bureaucracy 3) Insufficient drills and training for staff Sounds like France overall.
- MH15 7y agoI believe you meant: 1) brave individual front-line firefighters 2) not much else
- RandomBacon 7y agoPlease don't bash people here for their religious beliefs. HN is better than that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- syxun 7y agoHow's the investigation going? Who set the church on fire?
- selimthegrim 7y agoConspiracy theory much? This is HN, not Breitbart.
- syxun 7y agoConspiracy theory? I didn't even state a theory.
- JshWright 7y agoYour use of the word "who" implies that the fire was intentionally set by someone.
- SuddsMcDuff 7y agoGiven the rampant vandalism of Churches in France in recent years, including arson, it's quite reasonable to speculate that Notre Dame might have suffered the same fate. https://www.newsweek.com/spate-attacks-catholic-churches-france-sees-altars-desecrated-christ-statue-1370800 https://www.newsweek.com/spate-attacks-catholic-churches-fra... https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/vandalism-at-hundreds-of-french-churches-n509gwb0d https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/vandalism-at-hundreds-of-...
- JshWright 7y agoGiven the lack of evidence for arson, that speculation seems quite unfounded. Asking the question "Who set the church on fire?" is also not merely speculation, it is a presumption.
- SuddsMcDuff 7y ago"Given the lack of evidence" That's the very definition of speculation. "speculation seems quite unfounded" Purely a matter of personal opinion. There is a clear trend at play in France that is very uncomfortable and disturbing. I think it's lunacy to ignore it. But to each their own. That such speculation is often met with animosity is strange in itself. The conspiracy theory, if there is one, is that there is evidence of arson, but it's being suppressed by the authorities. I'm explicitly not taking a stance on that.
- chaosbolt 7y ago>Paris has endured so much in recent years, from terrorist attacks to the recent violent demonstrations by Yellow Vest protesters. Seriously? Putting the terrorist attacks in the same context as the Yellow Vest protests? One is an attack on civilians by extremist foreign groups, the other is those citizens protesting against a government decision that hurts them, which is a constitutional right in both France and the US... And this right to protest is what arguably made France a republic in the first place and led many other countries to follow on its steps. And labeling the protest as violent is dishonest at best, the police were violent and started throwing tear gas grenades at people, which made many protesters lose a hand or an eye (only the ones I saw, I'm sure there are many others who weren't recorded and put on Youtube).
- rb666 7y agoThe french have an overly large fondness of protesting. If they would save it for things that actually matter, the rest of the world wouldn't find it so laughable. The Yellow Vesters are even protesting AGAINST climate action (higher fuel taxes). I wouldn't call it terrorism, but it's certainly not helping anyone.
- dudul 7y agoPeople earning enough to live decently is not "worth it"? They are protesting against stupid climate actions that are mostly taken to give the impression the government is doing something, while in reality, it is just a way of getting a little more money out of tax payers. France barely emits 0.1% of world's CO2, how is it fair to tax fuel for cars (note that air traffic is left alone)? How is it fair when nothing is planned to help people live and work without their car? Edit: so far, all responses conveniently avoid the part where the government is taxing gas more and more, without making the investments to provide citizens with other means of transportation. Not all of France is Paris or Bordeaux or Lyon. Just like not all the US is NYC and SF. The majority of the population has no access to reliable public transportation to even consider not using their car.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
- swebs 7y agoWeird that the article doesn't mention the string of arson and other attacks on Catholic churches in France in the weeks leading up to the Notre Dame fire. https://www.newsweek.com/spate-attacks-catholic-churches-france-sees-altars-desecrated-christ-statue-1370800 https://www.newsweek.com/spate-attacks-catholic-churches-fra...
- qazpot 7y agoThose are not fires, that's just cultural enrichment.
- lfam 7y agoIt's not weird that this article, which translates the technical firefighting and structural aspects of the fire for laypeople, does not mention a xenophobic conspiracy theory that has been rejected by the French authorities.
- swebs 7y agoWhich part of the article I linked is xenophobic? Which part is a conspiracy theory? And finally, which part has been rejected by the French authorities?
- seszett 7y agoIt's all explained here: https://observers.france24.com/fr/20190424-amalgames-confusions-autour-incendies-attaques-eglises-france-carte https://observers.france24.com/fr/20190424-amalgames-confusi... It's in French and I don't have the energy to make a summary of it, but basically your original article is a mix of misreading and bad faith interpretations of an already biased original source.
- kyrieeschaton 7y agoThat rejection would be more credible if it came with an alternate explanation (none as of right now), or if it hadn't come while the building was literally still on fire.
- blargmaster33 7y agoIt was terrorist attack
- JshWright 7y agoThe article understates the risk the team that went to the north tower undertook. It mentions that they might not have an escape path, but that really doesn't communicate how exposed they were. It's not uncommon for a fire crew to advance into an exposed position to make an attack or search for victims. As was the case here, there is usually a hoseline or two set up in a defensive position, covering their escape path. The difference is, this is usually done in a comparatively small space (i.e. a crew holding the staircase of a house while a second crew searches the upstairs). If the defensive position starts to look at risk, the exposed crew can make it back within a minute or two. The crew in the northern tower of Notre-Dame would have taken far longer than that to make it back through, and it's very likely that if the defensive position had been lost, it wouldn't have been recognized until it was too late, trapping the crew in the tower.
- karambahh 7y agoThe operations commander purposely chose personnel with no children or spouse to go on the northern tower The call was made knowing that there may be casualties among them
- hef19898 7y agoDamn hard call to make, cudos to the people, personnel that went upt as well as command crew on the ground, conducting that kind of ops.
- omginternets 7y agoNote that the Paris Fire Brigade is a branch of the Army [0] (and in this case, it shows). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Fire_Brigade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Fire_Brigade
- jeffrallen 7y agoBut a mission like that is going to be executed best by taking volunteers. So yes, in theory, they were under command authority, but in practice what happened was exquisite teamwork, with some members of the team accepting exceptional risk because of the stakes. The fire chief is an excellent leader to be able to quickly weigh the stakes and accept the risk, because the consequences of failure would have landed on him in a crushing way (professional ruin, personal guilt for the suffering of survivors, etc). Thankfully the stakes are very rarely so high, and courage of this calibre is rarely called upon.
- uncletaco 7y agoShame on me for thinking they were talking about the college's football team at first. I was like "It hasn't already?". Roll tide.
- lowken10 7y agoAm I the only one who thought of the college football team first?
- segmondy 7y agoAmazing read, goes to show that fighting fire is not just about pointing a hose to the fire. There's a lot of strategic decision that has to be made. When you have multiple fire, which one do you point the hose at, where you position yourself, in what order do you fight them? You can't just look at the fire, but everything around it. Timing matters, I suppose SRE's can relate. But I believe developers can also learn from this by doing a lot of introspection.
- liberte82 7y agoYou can’t just send helicopters and dump water on it?
- JshWright 7y agoNot on a fire like this, no. That amount of water all at once would just finish destroying the structure. It also wouldn't be terribly effective, since it can only hit fire that exposed to the sky (which isn't the fire that actually matters... if the fire is visible from above, it has already burned though whatever it is you're trying to save). Aerial operation would also require evacuating the area completely, which would end all other firefighting operations (so you'd actually be reducing the overall firefighting capacity on scene).
- strgcmc 7y agoYou may or may not be aware, the parent comment you're replying to, is a reference to a certain President's (idiotic, unhelpful, and uninformed) tweet at the time. Thanks for providing a real explanation though.
- rtkwe 7y agoAs always it's important to /s sarcastic comments online because text does not convey sarcasm well without something like /s or the new cAmEl CaSe which does really well.
- jedberg 7y agoI didn’t see any mention of basic testing happening. I’d hope that they were doing constant readiness drills. Every couple of weeks they should have sent someone up to trigger a sensor and see how long it takes for someone to show up.
- mytailorisrich 7y agoI saw a TV report today and they still don't allow people under the part of the roof that collapsed. Currently they are clearing the rubbles there using remote-controlled robots.
- devtul 7y agoMy birthplace is roughly 9439km or 5865 miles from Paris, yet I hold back tears while reading and remembering the tragedy.
- anbop 7y agoI don’t know what they meant by closer than people knew. I heard the news, saw the pictures, and went to bed assuming it would be completely gone by the morning.