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Fire guts Delhi's natural history museum Fire guts Delhi's natural history museum
(about 1 hour later)
A fire has gutted India’s National Museum of Natural History in Delhi, one of the country’s top museums. The entire collection at Delhi’s natural history museum has been destroyed in a fire, officials have confirmed.
Harinder Singh, a fire official, said 35 firefighters took more than four hours to douse the blaze, which started early on Tuesday on the top floor of the six-storey museum. The blaze, which began sometime after 1.30am on Tuesday, burned through the upper part of the museum, where the museum’s collection was housed.
Five firefighters were taken to hospital with smoke inhalation and later released. Singh said the entire building was gutted by the blaze, which is believed to have started in the early hours of the morning. Firefighters were able to bring the flames under control before it reached the museum offices on the ground floor, mezzanine and first floor.
The environment minister, Prakash Javadekar, said the damage caused to the museum was being assessed but added that old and rare collections had been destroyed. He said: “This is a real loss. This loss cannot be counted in rupees. Some very old species of flora and fauna were there.” A spokesperson from Delhi’s fire service told the Guardian that the call was taken at about 2am, adding: “The museum was closed at the time so there were no casualties.”
An investigation into the cause of the fire has been ordered. Rajesh Panwar, Delhi’s deputy chief fire officer, said the museum’s fire safety equipment had not been functioning properly, making it more difficult for firefighters to finally bring the blaze under control. “We are still not sure how the fire started but eyewitnesses say it started on the top of the building. The water system in the building was not working, and we had to arrange for water to be brought from a nearby metro station – that was the reason there was so much damage. If the water was working we could have saved a lot more of the building.”
An immediate safety audit of India’s 34 major museums has been ordered. Two firefighters were injured, but both have been released from hospital.
The state-run natural history museum, which opened in 1978, featured exhibits on plants, animals and mineral wealth in India. Specimens included butterflies, frogs, snakes, lizards as well as tigers and leopards. One of the highlights of the collection was an irreplaceable bone from a sauropod dinosaur, which was an estimated 160 million years old. It may have belonged to one of the largest animals to have walked the earth.
The Times of India reported that the museum’s collection included a 160m-year-old bone of a sauropod dinosaur. Rahul Khot, the curator of the Bombay Natural History Society’s collection, said: “This is an irreversible loss. Museums are not made up overnight; it takes effort over decades to collect, research and curate a museum.
Associated Press contributed to this report Khot said it could take decades before a new collection for the museum was amassed again. “These are invaluable items. All museums have things which are very old, and very hard to put a monetary value on,” he said.
“This is a big loss for society and the nation. Many people use museums for education. It can’t be remade overnight.”
Plans to move the museum’s collection to a state-of-the-art facility were under way after a scathing report in 2012 by the government’s public accounts committee raised concerns about the maintenance of the museum.
A parliamentary panel had criticised the environment ministry for the “pathetic functioning” of the museum.
The minister of environment, who visited the remains of the museum on Tuesday morning, said: “I have asked for an energy and fire audit of all establishments of the ministry across the country.
“Plans will be made for how the museum is to be restored. First we have to assess the loss, then we can decide how to restore the museum.”
According to a spokesperson for the environment ministry, the building in which the collection was housed was managed by Ficci, a lobby group for Indian businesses.
Ficci and authorities at the natural history museum could not be reached for comment.
The museum, which was established in 1972, had a collection of preserved butterflies and reptiles, taxidermy, and a life-sized model of a dinosaur.