Inferno at Brazil's National Museum causes 'irreparable' damage and grief
"The loss of the National Museum's collection is insurmountable for Brazil," President Michel Temer tweeted.
No one knows what sparked the blaze around 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Firefighters worked through the night to battle the flames, but a museum official said the damage is already "irreparable."
"Very little will be left," preservation director Joao Carlos Nara told Agencia Brasil. "We will have to wait until the firefighters have completed their work here in order to really assess the dimension of it all."
So far, no serious injuries have been reported. Most of the human toll came in the form of grief and tears as employees, researchers and academics flocked to the scene in Rio de Janeiro.
Many of them cried as they watched flames consume the building. Marco Aurelio Caldas, who worked at the museum for nine years, was overcome by the loss.
"This is 200 years of work of a scientific institution -- the most important one in Latin America," he told Agencia Brasil.
"Everything is finished. Our work, our life was all in there."
A former royal palace
The palatial National Museum building used to be the home of a Portuguese royal family. Almost exactly 200 years ago, it was converted into a museum.
Since then, the National Museum has become Brazil's oldest historical institution and an internationally prominent research center
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/02/amer ... index.htmlHow sad, all those years of work and important artefacts gone up in smoke. Small wonder the people are distraught.