Los Angeles wildfires threaten renowned Getty Center

Los Angeles wildfires sprinted toward the famed Getty Center and its priceless collection Saturday after destroying thousands of buildings.

The Getty Center is in the hills overlooking Los Angeles, and the renowned art museum is in a new evacuation warning zone as the Palisades Fire rages eastward.

Built of fire-resistant travertine stone, cement, and steel, the Getty Center has been called a “beautiful fortress” and has attracted museum experts from around the world to inspect its security systems.

The center’s roof is covered with crushed stone to prevent embers from igniting, and resilient plants have been selected for its gardens.

Inside the center, exhibition halls can be closed off with an arched double door that is nearly impenetrable, museum officials said.

“The Getty’s staff, art collections, and buildings remain unaffected by the Palisades Fire,” the museum said Friday, hours before the evacuation warning was issued.

“The threat is imminent,” the Getty Museum added in a tweet.

The Getty’s unique collection consists of 125,000 works of art, including paintings by Rembrandt, Turner, Van Gogh, and Monet, and 1.4 million documents. It also houses a research center and a foundation.

Previously, museum officials said the collection was protected inside the center’s fireproof structure, which consists of 300,000 travertine stones and 12,500 tons of steel.

“The Getty was built to house precious works of art and protect them from fire, earthquakes, and any kind of destruction,” said Lisa Lapin when the Getty Center was threatened by a fire in 2019. She is now the Getty Center’s vice president of communications.

“We really built it like a beautiful fortress, and everything inside is quite safe,” she told AFP at the time.

The Getty Center was built more than 20 years ago by architect Richard Meier for $1 billion. The center’s protection also includes a 3.8 million-liter water storage tank to supply water to its irrigation system.

The Getty Center’s ventilation system is an internal circulation system, similar to the inner ring system of a car, which prevents smoke from entering the room from the outside.

Despite the extensive protection measures, the Getty Center announced earlier this week that it would close the museum “out of an abundance of caution and to help slow down traffic.”

When the 2019 fire threatened the Getty Center, it was used as a base for firefighters to fight the blaze.

That fire was caused by a branch falling on power lines, which burned 300 hectares of land and destroyed 10 homes.

Two years before the 2019 fire, a fire also triggered the Getty Center’s safety measures, although the fire only affected the other side of the adjacent highway.

“In both fires, we were very confident that the center was OK,” Lapin said in 2019.

Since the Palisades Fire broke out on Tuesday, the fire has burned nearly 9,000 hectares of land and is currently only 11% contained. Meanwhile, a series of fires have been sweeping through Los Angeles communities.

Earlier this week, the fire threatened the independent Getty Villa, which also has special fire protection measures.

Trees and vegetation around the coastal villas were destroyed, but the buildings themselves and their collections, including Greek and Roman antiquities, were spared.