A disastrous blaze at Brazil's 200-year-old National Museum in Rio de Janeiro was caused by "years-long negligence," Brazilian Culture Minister Sergio Sa Leitao said on Monday.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd September, 2018) A disastrous blaze at Brazil's 200-year-old National Museum in Rio de Janeiro was caused by "years-long negligence," Brazilian Culture Minister Sergio Sa Leitao said on Monday.
The fire began around 7:30 p.m. local time (22:30 GMT) on Sunday and spread quickly throughout the entire building, destroying much of the museum's collection of over 20 million items related to natural history, ethnology and archaeology. No casualties have been reported, the reason of the incident and the exact amount of damaged items have not been established yet.
"Let this be a wake-up call, so that such tragedies do not happen in other museums and other institutions," Leitao was quoted as saying by the Telesur tv channel. According to the minister, there was not enough time to introduce changes that could help avoid the tragedy.
Brazil's President Michel Temer said that "two hundred years of work, investigation and knowledge" had been lost in fire.
According to the broadcaster, the budget allocated for the needs of the museum was dramatically cut when Temer became president in 2016.
The museum, which was founded in 1818, used to house outstanding collections of animals, insects, minerals, fossils, mummies, meteorites and many other objects.
