UFRJ, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade, Federal do Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil burned with significant loss of national and scientific treasures; while may animal and plant specimens were stored offsite with the library, much of the museums 200 year old collection was destroyed or damaged by fire.
"A lot of people would find it strange to cry for a fire that apparently had no human victims.
But there's no way to hold tears when you have any idea what happened.
Our lives are fleeting, they'll end at some point. But the knowledge produced endures, survives us, exceeds generations. He's much more than one, two, or ten lives. It corresponds to hundreds of lives, from people of several generations, who gave their time, sweat, sanity for something that is so little recognized in Brazil: knowledge.
With the destruction of the main building of the National Museum die hundreds of lives that built this place. They lose records that there are no parallels. They lose the materials that based the description of several species. Fossils that are unique records of organisms that will never exist again. Mummies, archaeological artifacts, the oldest human fossil in the Americas.
There are no words that behold. There is nothing to describe what has been lost, and what will still be in this gross dismantling of everything related to science in Brazil.
A nation without memory is a nation with no future."
Vero Slo Bodian, Sep 2, 2018
