Brazil museum fire: Most of the building’s 20 million artefacts feared destroyed
Written by News on 04/09/2018
Forensic experts are waiting to enter Brazil’s oldest scientific museum amid fears a fire destroyed most of its 20 million artefacts.
Flames engulfed the 200-year-old national museum in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday.
Protesters clashed with police after the blaze following complaints that years of government neglect had contributed to its destruction.
The museum held Latin America’s largest collection of historical and scientific artefacts, with one official telling a Brazilian news outlet that as much as 90% may have been destroyed.
Firefighters initially struggled to contain the flames because the hydrants closest to the museum did not work.
The cause of the blaze is not yet known.
Brazil’s culture minister Sergio Leitao told local media that the fire was likely caused by either an electrical short-circuit or a homemade paper hot-air balloon that may have landed on the roof.
The museum, whose main building was once a 19th century royal palace, had contained a skull called Luzia that was among the oldest fossils ever found in the Americas.
It held an Egyptian mummy and the largest meteorite ever discovered in Brazil – one of the few objects that officials could confirm had survived.
Cristiana Serejo, a vice-director of the museum, told Brazilian media that possibly around 10% of the collection had survived.
On Monday, officials promised $2.4m (£1.8m) to shore up the building and promised to rebuild the museum.
The office of Brazilian President Michel Temer said he had held talks with major banks and businesses to examine ways to reconstruct the museum “as soon as possible”.
But Luiz Philippe de Orleans e Braganca, an heir to Brazil’s last emperor, said: “Those saying that the museum will be rebuilt are not telling the truth.
“The building could be rebuilt, but the collection will never again be rebuilt.
“Two hundred years, workers, researchers, professors that dedicated in body and soul (to the museum)… the work of their life burned due to the negligence of the Brazilian state.”
The museum is not the first to burn down in Brazil, where public money for cultural projects has been drying up after a deep recession.
A blaze in 2015 destroyed the prestigious museum of the Portuguese language in Sao Paulo.
(c) Sky News 2018: Brazil museum fire: Most of the building’s 20 million artefacts feared destroyed
