Brazilian here.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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").
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?