I just heard this on the news here, it’s terrible. Holding on to cultural objects is of utmost importance, and preserving the achievements of predecessors is not only respectful, it’s also educational. Not to mention art objects are one-of-a-kind and therefore irreplacable. Saying “everything gets lost sooner or later anyway” is too easy; might as not do anything as a species then.

‘Fire’ is so definite, it just completely destroys everything that’s gets grabbed by the flames. The building will sadly be lost by the looks of things, but I hope the cases objects were protected by, and the vaults some would have been stored in, proved to be just enough protection for items to be salvagable. Even if for only some.

This is tragic, so much history and work turned to ash in a day. I hope the firefighters manage to extinguish the flames as soon as possible, to try to protect whatever has survived.

Tragic, but luckily all that stuff is, or at least should be, documented digitally.

It is a terrible loss, but the issue is not something from the center right, since the issues have been going since redemocratization and all parties elected were center left.

It is more a show of how much of a bad idea is to left government to take care of anything.

The two fire hydrants closest to the museum were not functioning, fire fighters said. Trucks had to be sent to get water from a nearby lake.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/huge-blaze-engulfs-national-museum-in-rio-de-janeiro-with-two-hundred-years-of-work-lost-a3925906.html

Truly a sad day for Brazil. I hope no one was harmed. The cultural damage is bad enough,

Sucks but things like that used to happen all the time. There are so many great fires in the history of mankind that destroyed important human or natural creations.

9 years ago, the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne collapsed. Burying several 100.000 items.
1.5 billion Euro damage. Bet the damage done to this Museum is much higher.

Also just verified that the Museum was of responsibility of the UFRJ, which the Dean is a comunist from the PSOL Party. They also received 21M for the reform of the the museum like 3 months ago (a museum which they have been negleting for several years, from the estimated 500k needed per year they only gave 300k).

Look OP, then reply. He made it political from the onset.

Seems to be an old building that was also never designed to be a museum. From what I read here in news in my country they were just moving the most delicate objects to a newer, safer location. Terrible luck.