Delhi museum fire leads to over 800 degrees Celsius heat, rare specimens gutted

NEW DELHI: As many as 140 fire personnel and 60 fire engines battled the major fire that broke out on the top floor of six-storeyed National Museum of Natural History here on Tuesday.

Eight fire engines from the Connaught Place Fire Station were rushed to the spot and a team of 12 fire officials went inside the building to assess the situation. However, the fire personnel who went inside the building got trapped. The firefighters braved heat that went beyond 800 degrees Celsius to douse the massive fire, in an operation which lasted for over four hours.

“We have a large collection of flora and fauna and collections of natural history. “According to our policy we had only displayed one third of our total collection and the rest was kept in reserve. We are not allowed to enter the premises as of now and so have no clue about the extent of the loss,” said Naaz Rizvi, a scientist at the museum.

160-million-year-old dinosaur bone destroyed
Nearly four-decade-old National Museum of Natural History, housing thousands of rare specimens of flora and fauna including a 160-million-year old fossil bone of the Indian Sauropod Dinosaur, at the heart of the capital was on Tuesday ravaged in a massive blaze. The 38-year-old museum had a rich collection of herpetological specimen, specimen of tigers and leopards, preserved butterflies and pre-historic fossils and all of them have been gutted. It also had a 160-million-year old fossil bone of the Sauropod Dinosaur.