As I’ve said here before, I’m currently chairman of the board in the Iceland Music Information Centre, where Icelandic music is collected and kept so performers and musicologists can have access to it.
Well, we had a fire, yesterday.
Not IN the Centre, but two floors up, but there’s water on the floors and of course smoke everywhere. Just managed to save the brand new security update of the scanned pieces (the update was ongoing when the fire came up – and finished while the fire squad turned out the fire).
Things look a bit better than we were afraid of. There’s a lot of music in there, that would be really hard to find again.
No, we don’t have a fireproof vault. The center is dreadfully underfunded. It wasn’t a question of if, but when, something like this would happen.
Here’s a news article about this.
This is a huge fear of mine as well. I’m glad to hear that the music is safe. The loss of such things always makes me feel horrible. It’s like losing history.
I really need a fire proof safe as well.
-TP
Yes, we were very much relieved, and actually this seems to be doing more good than harm in the end, as now we can get official help to get things in good shape.
We would have lost history, yes. Whew!