[anon491throw]

Short of a very precise aerial tanker mission (and how long would it take to spin that up or get lucky with an aircraft in training nearby, fill up and then vector it), no way to put it out. It might've been feasible as there are very few tall buildings or structures in Paris and it's in the middle of the river with nothing much on either side.

People also should know that simultaneous fires on multiple floors of multi-story buildings typically aren't possible to fight either, reducing possible efforts to containment and damage mitigation.

[JshWright]

I don't get all the hype about tankers... A tanker load would do significant structural damage to the building, would be a huge risk in city with a lot of tall structures, would be totally ineffective on the bulk of the fire (that's below the roof), and would require pulling out all the firefighters on the scene, significantly reducing the overall firefighting capacity.

[laurentl]

This is basically what the chief of the Paris fire brigade told the news (dumping a load of water on the building would finish destroying it). Add to that the fact that the closest Canadairs are 600 miles away and designed to draw water from the sea.

[throwmeawayl8r]

It seems like the weight of amount of water/retardant to effectively extinguish a fully-involved fire would be a problem AND simultaneously smothering the fire underneath AND reducing core coal temperatures below ignition point would need to happen. It's a thought towards a possible solution to a ruinous class of fires, but there appears to be a need for a gentle and widely-deployed technology to rescue historic structures in the midst of fire events.

1. Cool an outer structure rapidly with lightweight/gently-applied, inert, high specific heat material from above.

2. Thixotropic gently-applied, inert, high specific heat material inner structure (possibly same as 1.).