
Massive fire tears through Rio's 200-year old National Museum - personlurking
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-brazil-fire-museum/rios-200-year-old-national-museum-hit-by-massive-fire-idUKKCN1LJ00C
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personlurking
This is on par with The Smithsonian or the British Museum burning to the
ground. It's where Brazil's Declaration of Independence was signed and it was
the residence of the Portuguese Royal Family for decades.

While the closest fire station is 500 meters from where the fire happened, and
the National Museum is located in front of a lake (in a place called Quinta da
Boa Vista), they had issues accessing their water supply - for which they are
the entity responsible - and whole areas of the wooden, termite-infested
museum burned while they tried to sort the water supply out.

The museum was in disrepair for several years, with the media reporting on it
repeatedly, but their govt budget for 2018 was a mere $13,500. Since 2010, it
was the fourth important Brazilian museum to be burnt down due to fire (or
rather, lack of a proper fire prevention system).

Not from the article, but important to emphasize:

"The museum of Quinta da Boa Vista had the largest collection of Egyptian
mummies outside of Egypt, the largest collection of Pompeii outside of Italy,
the mummies of the American civilizations, the fossils of Luzia, the oldest
homo sapiens ever found in Brazil. Largest meteor to ever fall into the
country. A huge collection of dinosaur fossils."

And, finally, I'll add that the museum was where physical evidence of new
species was mandatorily catalogued. It's a loss for so many other branches
outside history, like biology.

