A 2011 earthquake caused considerable damage to the National Cathedral and some other District of Columbia landmarks. Phase I of repairs to the Cathedral are complete and Phase II has begun.
This is how we do press conferences at @WNCathedral pic.twitter.com/Qa2Dgn1gFM
— National Cathedral (@WNCathedral) April 14, 2016
From the Cathedral press room:
Phase I of the Cathedral’s restoration, which cost $10 million and encompassed all interior repairs and one-eighth of the building’s exterior restoration work, was completed in June. Phase II will complete the building’s remaining exterior repairs. Phase II has is estimated to take over a decade and approximately $24 million to complete. The effort will be broken into several stages and repairs will be made only after the money has been raised to complete them. The current stage, beginning on Thursday, will complete $2 million worth of repairs.
Earthquake restoration efforts at Washington National Cathedral began in March 2014 after the building suffered extensive structural damage in 2011 during the largest earthquake the East Coast had seen in nearly 115 years.
Local CBS affiliate WUSA reports:
Phase two is focused on the exterior: repairing four grand pinnacles and six of the structures that help support them more than 100 feet off the ground in an area called the North Transept Façade. ….
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Supports and pinnacles ultimately have to be carved out by hand, making the work tedious and time consuming. Mason’s turned to robots for help cutting the contours, removing a lot of the “grunt work,” said Sean Callahan, a mason at the Cathedral.
“At the end of the day,” Callahan said, “you have to finish these fine details with a mallet.”
Both CBS and NBC have video.