The worst of it....
Yes, the Near IR Integral Field Spectrograph (NIFS) was just ready for shipment to Gemini here in Hawaii....
The loss of the instrument laboratoris is the worst part of all this- They were just starting to build an adaptive optics camera for Gemini South...
This hits Gemini hard... This is a real setback for astronomy... Not just Australia, but worldwide.
How did the fire start, and howcome it was so hard to protect the observatories?