Meet the Robot Firefighter That Battled the Notre Dame Blaze

Meet WALL-E’s badass cousin, Colossus, a firefighting robot that helped turn the tide at Monday’s devastating fire at Notre Dame de Paris.

With the roof ablaze and threatening to bring the monumental building down, the Paris Fire Brigade withdrew its human firefighters and sent in one of its newest team members, a caterpillar-tracked tank-bot quickly becoming a firefighter’s best friend.

With its help, the firefighters extinguished the blaze and largely saved 850 years of history—and no civilians or firefighters were killed in the process.

Videos from the dramatic fire showed Colossus deployed in Notre Dame’s main chamber, called the nave, connected to a hose with its water cannon—one of several possible attachments—pumping water high into the air and onto the flames.

Colossus helped extinguish the fire and lower the temperature inside the nave, Paris Fire Brigade spokesperson Gabriel Plus told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“WE’RE ALWAYS GOING TO NEED THE HUMAN ELEMENT...[BUT ROBOTS ARE] 100 PERCENT THE FUTURE."

“It was a tragic moment for all French citizens, but we are very proud to support the firemen to help protect this monument and also protect lives,” said Cyril Kabbara, co-founder of Shark Robotics, the French company that developed Colossus in concert with the Paris Fire Brigade.

“It was a terrible situation, but it’s really amazing to see them put that robot to work and protect firefighters,” said Michael Howe, president of Howe and Howe Technologies, a U.S. company that has been manufacturing the Thermite line of firefighting robots for more than a decade.

“We’re always going to need the human element,” he said, but robots have proven to be an important firefighting tool. “It’s 100 percent the future.”