Fragments in museum fire provide hope
RIO DE JANEIRO — Firefighters found bone fragments from a collection in the stillsmoldering National Museum, an official said Tuesday, raising hopes that a famed skull might somehow have survived a massive blaze that turned historic and scientific artifacts to ashes.
Flames tore through the museum Sunday night, and officials have said much of Latin America’s largest collection of treasures might be lost.
Aerial photos of the main building showed only heaps of rubble and ashes in the parts of the building where the roof collapsed.
The firefighters “found fragments of bones in a room where the museum kept many items, including skulls,” said Cristiana Serejo, the museum’s vice director. “We still have to collect them and take them to the lab to know exactly what they are.”
In its collection of about 20 million items, one of the most prized possessions is a skull called Luzia, which is among the oldest fossils ever found in the Americas.
Museum spokesman Marcio Martins noted that the collection contains hundreds of skulls, and all material would first need to be examined by the Federal Police, who are investigating the still-unknown cause of the fire. Experts will then examine them to determine their identity.
Some objects were rescued from the flames Sunday night by a professor who rushed into the blaze. Paulo Buckup, a professor of zoology at the museum, recounted Tuesday how he and a few other people pulled out mollusks and marine specimens, going into and out of the building several times until it became too dangerous.
He said the group tried to identify in the dark the most irreplaceable objects, but said they only saved a “minuscule portion of the heritage that was lost.”
Many have already said that regardless of what is salvaged, the loss will be immeasurable. Marina Silva, a candidate for president in upcoming elections, called it a “lobotomy of Brazilian history.”
The Globo newspaper wrote in an editorial published Tuesday: “The size of the catastrophe is vast: It struck the national memory, through the loss of the important historical collection; it affected the sciences, interrupting research; and it represents a cultural loss impossible to quantify. We only know that it is enormous.”
The disaster has led to a series of recriminations about who was to blame, and it has raised concerns that other institutions might be at risk.
Investigators were first allowed to enter the main building Monday, but it is still offlimits to researchers.
Even as efforts turned to searching the rubble, firefighters were still occasionally directing water at the building, where some embers were still burning.
Luiz Fernando Dias Duarte, a museum official, said Monday that anything held in the main building was probably destroyed.
But on Tuesday, she held out some hope, telling journalists that staff members were “reasonably optimistic about finding some more items inside.”
With the cause still under investigation, many already have begun to fix blame, saying years of government neglect left the museum underfunded and unsafe. Roberto Leher, rector of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, to which the museum was linked, said it was well known that the building was vulnerable to fire and in need of extensive repair.
In fact, two years ago, federal prosecutors in Rio de Janeiro began investigating safety conditions in the building.