Fire guts Brazilian museum
Catastrophic loss of artifacts feared; country’s infrastructure woes spark anger
Firefighters work late Sunday as flames engulf Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro. On Monday, protesters gathered outside the gates of the 200-year-old museum and demanded to see the damage, while officials feared that the blaze had destroyed most of the objects in the burned-out main building.
RIO DE JANEIRO — Smoke rose Monday from the burnedout hulk of Brazil’s National Museum, as recriminations flew over who was responsible for a fire that destroyed at least part of Latin America’s largest collection of historical artifacts and documents.
A few hundred protesters who gathered outside the museum gates tried several times to push into the site, demanding to see the damage and calling on the government to rebuild. Police held the crowd back with pepper spray, tear gas and batons.
The museum held Latin America’s largest collection of historical artifacts, and the damage was feared to be catastrophic. One official told a Brazilian news outlet that as much as 90 percent may have been destroyed. Some parts of the collection were stored at other sites.
The main building, which was once the home of the Brazilian royal family, housed a collection of 20 million items that included Egyptian and Greco-Roman relics and the oldest human skull found in the Western Hemisphere, known as Luzia.
On Monday, the building was still standing, but much of it appeared to have been gutted. Civil defense authorities warned that the structure was not safe to enter because the roof and internal walls had been compromised and could collapse further.
It was not clear how the fire began Sunday evening, when the museum was closed. But the flames quickly fueled criticism of Brazil’s dilapidated infrastructure and budget deficits as the nation prepares for national elections in October.
Several officials have said the building was known to be in serious disrepair and at significant risk of catching fire.
“Just crying doesn’t solve anything,” Alexander Kellner, the museum’s director, told reporters at the scene. He became emotional as he described plans to salvage what was left of the collection and rebuild. “We have to act.”
The museum has suffered underfunding for years that prevented renovations and forced it to close exhibits. The Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reported in May, as the museum was preparing to celebrate its bicentennial, that its annual budget had fallen from around $130,000 in 2013 to around $84,000 last year.
In a sign of how strapped the museum was, when a termite infestation last year forced the closure of a room containing a 39-foot dinosaur skeleton, officials turned to crowdfunding to raise the money to reopen the room.
The institution had recently secured approval for a planned
renovation, including an upgrade of the fire-prevention system, Kellner said.
“Look at the irony. The money is now there, but we ran out of time,” he said.
Luiz Fernando Dias Duarte, the deputy director, noted another irony: He said museum officials were seeking renovation funds in 2013, at the same time that Brazil was spending millions to build stadiums for the World Cup, which it hosted the next year.
“The money spent on each one of those stadiums — a quarter of that would have been enough to make this museum safe and resplendent,” he told Brazilian TV.
Duarte said that anything held in the main building was likely destroyed. Cristiana Serejo, a vice-director of the museum, told the G1 news portal that as little as 10 percent of the collection may have survived.
Fire Department spokesman Roberto Robadey said firefighters got off to a slow start because the two fire hydrants closest to the museum did not work.
Employees had recently received training from firefighters in how to prevent and respond to a blaze in the building, Duarte said. He lamented that no one was on hand Sunday night to put that training into practice.
“It was a constant worry,” he said, adding that he would unplug everything in his office before leaving because of the fire risk.
On the site where the museum sits, signs of disrepair were evident: The fencing was dilapidated, stonework was cracked, and lawns appeared untended.
“This fire is what Brazilian politicians are doing to the people,” said Rosana Hollanda, a 35-year-old high school teacher, who was crying Monday at the gates. “They’re burning our history, and they’re burning our dreams.”
Roberto Leher, the rector of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, of which the museum is a part, told reporters that the building needed an upgrade to its electrical and water systems and a new fire-prevention plan.
“We all knew the building was in a vulnerable state,” he told reporters.
Asked by a reporter why such disasters don’t happen at cultural institutions in other countries, Kellner, the museum director, replied: “Ask yourself that. That’s a good question.”