A fire at a warehouse in Lima, Peru has claimed the lives of 60,000 laptops and 500,000 textbooks.

Firefighters battled the fire for hours, but there was little they could do to stop the massive blaze. At the end of the day 60,000 OLPCs were burned to a crisp and thousands of kids in the poorest parts of the country will face delays in the distribution of textbooks, not to mention OLPCs.

The damage is estimated at more than $100 million and officials are furiously pledging to investigate the disaster. Luckily nobody was seriously injured and Peru’s ministry of education believes it will manage to overcome issue caused by the loss of so much inventory.

We wonder what would have happened had 60,000 iPads been burned alive. We would probably see candlelight vigils in front of Apple shops across the world.

More here.