
Brazil museum fire: ‘incalculable’ loss as 200-year-old Rio institution gutted - gacba
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/fire-engulfs-brazil-national-museum-rio
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diego_moita
Brazilian here.

You know what is the worse? Is that I don't feel revolt, anger or indignation.
I don't even feel surprised. I just feel sad, an heavy and paralyzing sadness.

This is how countries die on the inside. This is like seeing someone you love
sliding into addiction and slowly destroying himself. You imagine a thousand
ways to avoid it but the person just won't do anything.

We are not just loosing our culture, our past, our history. With growing
lawlessness, crime and violence, environmental devastation, failing education,
public health and public finances we are failing as country. We're loosing the
country.

Even that old joke we tell about us is not funny anymore ("Brazil is the
country of the future and will always be, it will never be the country of the
present").

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erikpukinskis
Oh my god. What a horrifying loss of history.

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falcor84
The story focused on the hydrants, but I would expect a repository of such
value to have very powerful fire safety mechanisms and strict procedures
around them to prevent the spread of fire in the first place. What happened?
Was it just about the lack of funds?

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andrenth
The problem was not the hydrants. There were warnings about possible fires
dating from 2004, with exposed wires and terrible conditions in general.

This is the fault of government bureaucracy and irresponsibility (eg. during
the World Cup year a restoration was approved but the money never released —
but money for stadiums was abundant).

Brazil’s ministry of culture (ha!) has historically spent millions sponsoring
dozens of mainstream artists, but a museum with old stuff in it is unable to
take part in political party propaganda.

Finally, the museum is administrated by a federal university whose directors
refuse to take private money via donations (apparently leaving the museum in
terrible conditions is preferable to taking dirty money from evil rent seeking
capitalists...).

