Brazil's National Museum fire destroys millions of artifacts

The fire that ravaged Brazil's National Museum finally went out on Monday, leaving little of the more than 20 million artifacts it had housed. President Temer has promised to pull from several resources to reconstitute the collection.

Firefighters and museum workers raced to save historical relics from the blaze. They got off to a difficult start, as two hydrants closest to the museum were reportedly not working. Fire department spokesman Roberto Robadey said museum workers had helped to save some of the valuable pieces.

Twenty fire brigades fought the fire at the National Museum which started on Sunday night. After five hours it was under control but work was ongoing to extinguish it completely. Former environment minister Marina Silva called it a catastrophe "Equivalent to a lobotomy of the Brazilian memory."

President Michel Temer said in a statement: "Two hundred years of work and research and knowledge are lost." Calling it a "tragic day for Brazil," he said: "The loss of the collection of the National Museum is incalculable."

Deputy director Luiz Fernando Dias Duarte expressed "profound discouragement and immense anger" as he accused Brazilian authorities of a "lack of attention." There had been funding cuts to the museum, which was linked to the city's Federal University. "We fought years ago, in different governments, to obtain resources to adequately preserve everything that was destroyed today," Dias Duarte said.

The natural history and anthropology museum housed housed artefacts from Greco-Roman times, from ancient Egypt and "Luzia" the oldest human fossil found in Brazil.

As demonstrators began to gather around the devasted building, police used batons, tear gas and pepper spray on the crowds. While Culture Minister Sergio Sa Leitao admitted that "this tragedy could have been avoided," he stopped short of apologizing.

The museum had suffered from major funding cuts. According to employees, concern about fire dangers was widespread, with workers often unplugging everything in their offices at the end of the day. Workers were also obliged to take fire emergency training, but no one was on hand on Sunday to put it into practice.