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Mostly replicas burned in National Museum fire, says official
The public can breathe a sigh of relief, as officials have announced that replicas comprised most of the objects damaged in Saturday's fire at the National Museum.
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The inner courtyard of the National Museum in Central Jakarta is seen in this file photo taken on April 24, 2016. (JP/Ni Nyoman Wira)
M
ost of the items that were destroyed in the fire on Saturday night that engulfed the National Museum were replicas, an official has said.
A total of six rooms in Building A of the museum complex in Central Jakarta were damaged in a blaze that started at 8 p.m. and lasted around three hours.
A preliminary investigation found that the fire was caused by an electrical short in a shed that was being used to store construction materials for ongoing renovation at the museum. Fanned by strong winds, the blaze then spread to nearby Building A, where parts of the roof and walls collapsed.
No casualties were reported in the incident.
Building A is part of the original structure of the National Museum, which was built in 1862 by the colonial Dutch East Indies government and opened to the public in 1868.
Building A housed the ImersifA video mapping exhibition spanning the various eras of Indonesian history, from prehistory to the 1945 Independence Movement, as well as the Islamic culture gallery and the museum’s prehistory, ethnography and ceramic collections.
The museum complex has approximately 141,000 objects, including prehistoric artifacts, stone sculptures, ceramic pieces and numismatic and geological collections.
