Study abroad student witnesses tragedy in Paris

By Emma-Cate Rapose

Parisians sing as Notre Dame de Paris burns

Katarina Trifunovic had just finished a semester studying abroad at City, University of London in April 2019 when her mother came to visit. After the stress of a semester over 5,500 miles away from her home in Carlsbad, California, she and her mother decided to take a couple of days to explore another European city - Paris, France. 

Trifunovic and her mother spent the morning of April 15 exploring the city, spending time at the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre before settling down for some macaroons and tea at a local cafe. They then proceeded to take a walk around the city around 6 p.m., when her mother noticed something strange in the distance.

“Why is there smoke over there? That’s super weird,” Trifunovic heard her mother say.

Trifunovic looked up and thought nothing of the smoke at first, assuming it was a factory producing the cloud filling the sky, just like in London. She then realized she was in Paris, and there were no factories nearby.

Looking closer, Trifunovic realized that the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral was burning. She had been there earlier that morning - she had used the cathedral as a meeting spot to reunite with her cousin, who she had not seen in years, and they took smiling pictures outside of the elegant 674 year old structure. 

As a Christian, Trifunovic felt she was in the midst of a monumental, but unfortunate moment for her religion. Being in a foreign city, Trifunovic felt scared.

“Is the whole thing going to burn down?” Trifunovic thought. “How is Paris going to react to this?”

Trifunovic felt comfort that, in a city thousands of miles away from home, she was surrounded by American tourists feeling the same way she did. Everyone took our their phones to Google any details - Had anyone died? Was this an accident?

Trifunovic had turned around, facing away from the cathedral, to take her phone out of her bag to search for information online, when the spire of the tower began to fall. An audible gasp came from the crowd, and she began to film what she was seeing.

Trifunovic did what any 21-year-old would do - send a picture of the scene to her friends, with a message saying “guys, Notre Dame just caught on fire, and my hotel is a 5 minute walk from it.”

The photo Trifunovic took at the scene and sent to her friends

***

Kali Hoffman just finished her semester abroad at City University, and was playing tour guide for her parents in London in the days following the program. On her walk to Sainsbury’s, a local grocery store, with her parents, she looked down at her phone and saw the image sent from Trifunovic flash on her screen.

Hoffman’s mom looked over her shoulder.

“What is that?” her mother yelled.

“I don’t know mom, Kat just sent it to me, hold on,” Hoffman said, as she zoomed into the picture and realized the intensity of the photo.

The Hoffman family’s itinerary for the week included spending April 17 to April 19 in Paris, a mere two days later. When Hoffman’s mother learned that Notre Dame was on fire, her initial fear was terrorism. The family had never been to Paris, and it was a dream for all of them to finally be able to visit the city they had constantly talked about in their dining room in Orange, California.

For hours, the family panicked, and spent the evening glued to their phones, making sure the city was safe to visit two days later. As family members reached out to Hoffman to make sure she was safe she informed them that she was not in Paris yet, but still in London. She soon received a Facebook message from her grandmother.

“It was an accident, not terrorism,” the message said. “The city is still safe to visit.”

It was a relief to know that the fire was unintentional, nobody had died, and the family trip could still go on.

***

Later in the evening, after eating dinner with her mom, Katarina Trifunovic went back to her hotel, just five minutes from the scene of the fire. After it had been confirmed that the fire was caused by restoration, Trifunovic felt restless. Wanting to get closer to the scene, she decided to take a walk to the cathedral.

Trifunovic had to fight her way through the crowd near the cathedral to get close. Smoke still filled the area, and the fire was still so fresh that firefighters were working through the night to put it out.

The part of the cathedral where the spire had fallen looked empty to Trifunovic. Her heart hurt and she wondered how much damage had actually been done. 

Despite the pain Trifunovic felt for the people of Paris, she also felt that there was a sense of community at the scene of the fire. Parisians and tourists alike mourned the loss of a historic structure in a historic city. Violinists played sad music, and Parisians were singing songs that meant a lot to the Catholic church and to the city itself. In a time of sadness, all came together to witness history along the Seine, holding vigils, singing, and praying.

Trifunovic never expected, when she had arrived to Europe in January, that she would be experiencing history alongside her mother and the people of Paris. Just like she had grown to be a stronger person during her four months abroad, the people of Paris were growing stronger together.