Brazil museum loses 20m pieces in blaze
BRAZIL’S National Museum has been gutted by a massive fire that destroyed most of the 20 million pieces inside, including some of the region’s oldest human remains and Egyptian mummies.
The loss of history was described as a “lobotomy of the Brazilian memory” by Marina Silva, a former environment minister. The museum, which celebrated its 200th anniversary this year, is the biggest collection of natural history in the region.
Television footage late on Sunday showed two huge columns of smoke burning on either end of the museum, in capital city Rio de Janeiro, trailing up into the night sky. Most of the windows of the 19th century building were lit up by the flames within.
Yesterday morning, firefighters laid out the remains of what had been salvaged, but it will be weeks before the scale of the loss can be known.
Officials have blamed the origins of the blaze, which began after the museum had been closed to the public, on neglect and poor funding.
The museum is entitled to a maintenance budget of $128,000 (£99,000), according to reports, of which it hasn’t received the full amount since 2014. National Geographic reported that it received just $13,000 (£10,000) from the Brazilian government this year.
“My feeling is of total dismay and immense anger,” Luiz Duarte, a vice di- rector of the museum, told local media.
“For many years we fought with different governments to get adequate resources to preserve what is now completely destroyed,” he said.
Among the artefacts that are likely to have been lost in the blaze was the skull of Luzia; a woman believed to have lived 11,500 years ago.
Mercio Gomes, an anthropologist, called for the museum and its lost collection to be rebuilt, saying on Facebook: “We have to reconstitute our National Museum, remake natural science collections, Indigenous Art Collections, plant collections, animals, maps, anything that can be reconstituted from the past,” he wrote.