Flooded street in Copenhagen on July 2FLICKR, SEIER+SEIER
The monsoon-style rainstorms that rocked Copenhagen earlier this month (July 2) left much of the city underwater, including the Danish Cancer Society's Biobank, where the basement filled with 2 meters of water in about 30 minutes. The flood waters infiltrated the biobank’s freezers, thawing hundreds of cell lines and tissue samples, ScienceInsider reports. Though the full extent of the damage remains unclear, workers have saved more than 1 million tissue samples—which are less vulnerable when thawed and refrozen—thanks to a refrigerated van brought in the day after the flooding, according to biobank director Jørgen Olsen.
"It doesn't matter that they were warmed up for a few hours, as long as you freeze them down again," Olsen told ScienceInsider. Among those saved are samples from a ...
