A Monumental Cleanup at Versailles

The 115-foot cedar that towered over the park where Marie Antoinette played at being a milkmaid more than two centuries ago has been virtually torn from the earth. An even taller pine planted for Napoleon is now smashed to bits, some smaller than a pencil.

In the gardens and woods of Versailles, where the lords and ladies of France once strolled and flirted, 100 tree surgeons, gardeners and landscapers have been working seven days a week, some with no time off since Christmas. Spared during the French Revolution and three successive German invasions of France, the opulent estate outside Paris is still reeling from the single most destructive episode in its long history: a freak winter storm with winds of up to 105 mph.

“For us, this is our very own Chernobyl,” chief gardener Alain Baraton, 43, said as he toured the devastation in his muddied two-door Peugeot.

A chorus of chain saws hummed angrily as workers cut up trees felled by the gale and sawed down others that had been heavily damaged. The crisp air was smoky and filled with snow-white ash from fires of burning brush and logs.

In an hour, the hurricane-force winds roaring in from the English Channel toppled 10,000 of Versailles’ trees, blew in windows in the chateau and sheared off some of the edifice’s 220-pound lead roofing sheets, sending them flying in the wind like so many paper kites. Hubert Astier, president of the state-run museum and grounds, estimated that the chateau and its gardens and woods suffered more than $35 million in damage.

The Dec. 26 storm, and another the following day that raked southern France, caused devastation unequaled for as long as people in this country have been keeping records. A staggering 270 million trees, the equivalent of more than three years of French timber production, were blown down, and electricity and telephone service temporarily knocked out to millions.

Because the storm struck early on a Sunday morning, no one was hurt at Versailles. And in what Astier called a miracle, none of the hundreds of outdoor statues was damaged.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin announced a $2.7-billion package of government aid and loans to clean up and repair the damage and to counter the effects of another ecological disaster, an oil spill caused by the sinking of a tanker off Brittany.

Although many historic buildings, including Notre Dame cathedral and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, suffered some harm, nowhere is the wreckage more obvious than at this former seat of the French court where Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson once served as America’s envoys. At Versailles, President Wilson also negotiated the treaty that was supposed to make World War I the last of all wars.

Plants two and three centuries old, including a tulip tree imported from America in 1783 by the royal gardener at the time, were torn up by the roots and now lie inert on the ground like corpses. The raging winds snapped other trees in mid-trunk like matches.

Cleanup operations will take at least two months, Astier said. Restoring the woods may take as many generations.

“This is a catastrophe for us,” said Christophe Terrier, 26, after using his chain saw to fell a damaged linden that for at least 80 years shaded a carriage way leading to the Petit Trianon, a separate palace on the grounds. “It gives us work, but what a tragedy to take five minutes to cut down something that took 100, even 300, years to grow.”

Jacques Durand, in charge of Versailles’ rambling English-style garden, said he feels that his 25 years of work have been for naught.

“I knew each tree,” Durand said sadly as he stood in green overalls, watching the tree surgeons at work. “We’ll never again in our lifetimes see it again the way it was. Maybe our grandchildren will.”

Hit especially hard on the 2,170-acre grounds were trees at the Petit Trianon; the forest around the Queen’s Hamlet, a village built on Marie Antoinette’s orders so she and her aristocratic retinue could play at being peasants; and some of the gardens near the sprawling chateau itself. Eighty percent of the rare varieties of trees at Versailles were reportedly destroyed, including many planted in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Moreover, a lot of trees still standing will have to be cut down because their roots are now dangerously unsteady.

In an irony of history, it is ultimately Louis XIV who is responsible. In 1661, the absolute monarch known as the “Sun King” decreed the building of a palace unrivaled in splendor to celebrate his reign. Louis chose a marshy site here, nine miles from Paris.

Unfortunately, at Versailles, trees tend not to sink their roots deeply into the moist soil but to send them out laterally, close to the surface. That makes them more liable to be blown down in a storm.

Francois Duboys Fresney, a tree surgeon and one of 50 people brought in to reinforce Versailles’ own grounds staff, now goes from one tree to another, checking the ground for telltale fissures that mean the roots’ grip in the soil has been badly weakened. Trees that must be cut he marks with a can of green spray paint.

“Look at that one,” Duboys Fresney said, showing a visitor a linden already bearing a green cross that consigned it to the chain saw. “It is now so shaky that the weight of its leaves with the morning dew on them would be enough to make it collapse.”

Such is Versailles’ cachet--10 million people visit the chateau or grounds each year--and association with French and world history that offers of assistance began to roll in almost immediately after the storm. “People from the U.S. contacted us by e-mail, saying they wanted to help, asking, ‘Where do we send money?’ ” Astier said.

One U.S. benefactor, the president said, offered 1 million francs--more than $150,000. Canada promised to send a team of lumberjacks.

To replace downed and damaged trees, gardeners at Versailles plan to plant replacements of the identical variety that are already 5 years to 6 years old and 15 feet high. One explanation is aesthetic, the other practical. Larger trees will be more able to resist future storms.

One of the reasons that Versailles suffered so badly from the high winds, Astier acknowledged, was that no major efforts were carried out in the 20th century to rejuvenate the grounds. “Our park had grown old,” he said. An earlier storm, in 1990, destroyed 1,800 trees.

Under Louis XIV’s renowned gardener, Andre Le Notre, the average tree’s height at Versailles was 60 feet. Over the centuries, that more than doubled, increasing the likelihood of storm damage.

As many Americans as French visit the chateau each year, and Americans, Astier said, are more generous with donations. The roofing damaged by the wind, for instance, was bought thanks to a 1920 gift from the Rockefellers. Versailles gets only half its money from the French government and must depend on visitor receipts and benefactors for the rest.

“Our idea now is to have an ‘adopt-a-tree’ program, for each of the 10,000 trees that need to be replaced,” Astier said. For 1,000 francs (about $152), a benefactor will receive a certificate and directions to where the new tree has been planted in the event he or she would like to visit, he said.

After hasty repairs to the roof and windows, the chateau reopened to visitors. On Saturday, a small section of the grounds will reopen. Meanwhile, the gardeners go about their work.

“We’d all been warned about the year 2000 bug,” Baraton said, grimly humorous. “But when it came, it didn’t destroy computers. It destroyed our trees.”

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The Versailles Web site is https://www.chateauversailles.fr. For those wishing to contribute, checks should be made out to Dons Chateau Versailles Tempete Decembre 99, and mailed to: M. le President de L’Etablissement public du musee et du domaine national de Versailles. Chateau de Versailles. P.R. 843. 78008 Versailles CEDEX. FRANCE