Fears up to 90% of artefacts may have been destroyed in blaze many blame on government neglect

Investigators are awaiting permission to enter the charred remains of Brazil’s National Museum to try to determine the cause of Sunday’s devastating fire and to survey the damage it has wrought on one of the largest scientific and historical collections in Latin America.



Officials fear the losses at the 200-year-old institution could be catastrophic, with one suggesting that up to 90% of the museum’s artefacts may have been destroyed.

Engineers have been conducting tests on the structure to make sure it will not collapse, while the authorities have said that the museum’s internal walls and parts of the roof are weak.

Federal police are investigating the fire as the museum is part of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. On Monday, Brazil’s culture minister, Sérgio Leitão, told the Estado de S Paulo newspaper that the blaze was probably caused by either an electrical short circuit or a homemade, paper hot-air balloon that may have landed on the roof.

Protesters, politicians and senior museum staff have blamed the blaze on years of government neglect and underfunding, saying that austerity cuts and spending on high-profile projects such as the World Cup and the Olympic Games had left the museum vulnerable.



“The money spent on each one of those stadiums, a quarter of that would have been enough to make this museum safe and resplendent,” said Luiz Fernando Dias Duarte, the museum’s deputy director, in an interview aired on Brazilian television in front of the still-smouldering ruins.



He said staff were so aware of the fire hazard that he was in the habit of unplugging everything in his office at night because of the risk.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rio de Janeiro’s burned out National Museum, one of Brazil’s oldest, with the Maracanã stadium in the background. Photograph: Mauro Pimentel/AFP/Getty Images

Firefighters have also said that initial attempts to tackle the fire were delayed as two hydrants near the museum were dry.

Roberto Leher, rector of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said it was well known that the building was vulnerable to fire and in need of extensive repairs.



Although the institution had recently secured nearly $5m (£3.9m) for a planned renovation – including an upgrade of the fire-prevention system – the money had not yet been paid out.



“Look at the irony. The money is now there, but we ran out of time,” the museum’s director, Alexander Kellner, told reporters at the scene.

The museum’s budget had fallen from about $130,000 in 2013 to around $84,000 last year, according to Marcio Martins, a spokesman for the museum. This year was on track to include an increase from last year.



In a sign of how strapped the museum was, when a termite infestation last year forced the closure of the room that housed a 12 metre-long dinosaur skeleton, officials turned to crowdfunding to raise the money to reopen the room.

On Monday, officials promised $2.4m to shore up the building and promised to rebuild the museum.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A woman shouts slogans during a protest against the Brazilian government following the fire. Photograph: Daniel Ramalho/AFP/Getty Images

President Michel Temer said private and public banks – as well as the mining giant Vale and the state-run oil company Petrobras – had agreed to help rebuild the museum and reconstitute its collections. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, offered in a tweet to send experts to help rebuild the museum.



“Those saying that the museum will be rebuilt are not telling the truth,” said Luiz Philippe de Orléans e Bragança, an heir to Brazil’s last emperor. “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, whose main building was once home to the royal family, had extensive paleontological, anthropological and biological specimens. It also 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. Some parts of the collection were held at other sites and thus spared.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aerial view of the gutted National Museum. Photograph: Buda Mendes/Getty Images

As anger over fire grew, several thousand people demonstrated in central Rio on Monday night, chanting and cheering speakers who attacked government for letting it fall into such neglect. The crowd gathered in the Cinelândia area then marched to Rio’s state legislature, where a huge banner calling for he release of imprisoned former leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was laid out on its steps.

Many were students who had used the museum, like Clarice Cruzeiro, 18, who has just finished high school and said the museum’s location in a leafy park in Rio’s gritty “North Zone”, far from upscale beach neighbourhoods, had made it a popular destination for people from lower income families like her.

“It was the most accessible museum for poor people. It was the first museum that many people went to,” she said, holding up one half of a banner that demanded the 20-year spending cap introduced in 2016 by Temer be revoked.

Some said the museum fire showed how Brazilians failed to value their own culture and history, prioritising study of Portuguese colonisers over their country’s original indigenous inhabitants. “We are taught that we are inferior,” said Pedro Monteiro, 21, a social sciences student at Rio’s Pontifical Catholic University. “Our eyes are focussed abroad,” said Camila Arielyda, 20, a law student from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Wallace Goulart, 24, had worked in the museum’s biology department since 2012 and said money had always been tight but budgets had shrunk even further after Temer took power in 2016. “Brazil does not value its history,” he said. Makko Jaibairas, 39, an indigenous activist lamented the loss of the museum’s indigenous collection. “Unfortunately we live in a country where people do not value their history, their roots,” he said.





Brazil is in the middle of a national election campaign and some candidates on the left have seized on the fire as an example of the disastrous effects of budget cuts implemented by Temer’s government. The budget data showed that cuts to the museum’s budget began under the previous leftwing government.



Associated Press contributed to this report