200-year-old National Museum of Brazil set on fire

RIO DE JANEIRO, (Patria) - A large fire that engulfed the 200-year-old National Museum in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, one of the oldest in Brazil, likely destroyed a huge number of artifacts, from archaeological finds to historical memorabilia.

- The destruction of the building and collections is an “incalculable loss for Brazil” - said Brazilian President Michel Temer.

Today is a tragic day for Brazil. Two hundred years of work, research and knowledge have been lost, Temer added.

So far there is no information on the exact extent of the destruction, nor on possible casualties or injuries, Hina reports.

Television footage of the fire, which broke out on Sunday after the museum was closed to visitors, shows it spiraled out of control during the night. The fire, whose cause is not yet known, started around 7:30 p.m. local time, just after midnight Central European time.

The museum was founded in 1818 and houses several key collections, including an Egyptian collection, Greco-Roman artifacts, a paleontological collection containing a dinosaur skeleton found in the Minas Gerais region, as well as the oldest human fossil found in Brazil. The museum holds a total of more than 20 million valuable items.

The vice president of the institution, Luiz Duarte, told Globo TV that the museum had been neglected for years.

- We never received anything from the government. We recently finalized an agreement with the state development bank BNDES for a major investment, so we could finally renovate the palace, and, ironically, install a new planned fire protection system - Duarte said.