The inner courtyard of the National Museum in Central Jakarta is seen in this file photo taken on April 24, 2016. - JP
JAKARTA (The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network): Most of the items that were destroyed in the fire on Saturday (Sept 16) 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 8pm 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 artefacts, stone sculptures, ceramic pieces and numismatic and geological collections.
Responding to public concerns over the safety of the items at the National Museum, Ahmad Mahendra, acting head of the education ministry’s Public Service Agency for Museums and Cultural Heritage Preservation (BLU MCB), said most of the items affected by the fire were replicas.
"Most of the affected collections were replicas of the prehistoric artifacts, the remaining [originals] are safe," Ahmad said in a statement on Sunday, as reported by Kompas.com.
He added that the hundreds of colonial-era artefacts recently returned by the Netherlands had been unaffected by the blaze, as they were stored in a location far from the fire.
Ahmad said the National Museum had formed an internal team to investigate the cause of the fire, to ensure the safety of the existing collections and to inventory the objects that had been damaged or lost in the blaze and those that were still salvageable.
"We're trying our best to return the National Museum to its prime condition as quickly as possible," Ahmad said.
The National Museum had been closed until further notice and people who had purchased tickets would be refunded, officials said.
As of Sunday, police had questioned 14 witnesses in connection with the fire, including security guards, employees and construction workers attached to the museum’s renovation project.
