- The Getty Villa survived the Pacific Palisades fire due to its anti-fire construction and technology.
- The museum's staff also spent days protecting the property and its artifacts from flames and smoke.
- Photos from the Getty Villa after the fire show what it takes to keep an at-risk estate safe.
When fire razed the Pacific Palisades in January, the Getty Villa proved itself to be a practically impenetrable anti-fire fortress.
Built like a fortress and outfitted with state-of-the-art firefighting infrastructure, this museum and ancient-Roman-estate replica remained standing as nearby homes burned down.
The facility's emergency preparedness specialist, Les Borsay, gave Business Insider a tour of the villa just weeks after he and a team of about 17 employees fought the flames encroaching on the property.
"It's not luck that this place is still here," he said.
In an era of mega-fires that can threaten urban areas like Los Angeles, the Getty Villa shows what it takes to keep an at-risk estate safe.
The Palisades fire sped down a hillside toward the Getty Villa on January 7, starting a days-long firefight.
"It was a little shocking how fast it moved," said Borsay, who was on-site when the fire broke out.
The museum is closed to visitors on Tuesdays, so there were no guests to evacuate.
The villa is a museum of the J. Paul Getty Trust. It houses a collection of Ancient Greek and Roman art.
The trust possesses the largest endowment of any museum in the world, estimated at more than $8 billion in 2023. It also includes the Getty Center, an art museum located 13 miles away in the Brentwood area, which has survived its own brushes with fire.
Most buildings on the property are made out of concrete with a tile roof, which is quite fire-resistant.
"Everybody always told me about the James-Bond-like construction of our sites," Katherine E. Fleming, the president and CEO of the GettyTrust, said in a press release after the fire. "And then I actually saw it in action. It is pretty astonishing."
Still, the facility staff had already sprung into action when they heard a fire had started in the Palisades that morning.
They wanted to prevent as many spot fires as possible — ignitions of vegetation, cars, or smaller wood structures — and protect the museum's artworks from smoke or changes in humidity.
Staff also moved cars into the underground concrete parking garage.
They taped up doors to prevent smoke from seeping into rooms where ancient artwork is kept.
The particulate matter in smoke can damage art and ancient artifacts.
They shut off the museum's HVAC system to outside air.
If pressure indoors was lower than pressure outdoors, the system could suck in smoke.
The fire was approaching the Ranch House, which came with the property when J. Paul Getty bought it after World War II.
He added a second floor and filled the house with his growing art collection.
All vents into the house's attic area are fitted with mesh, Borsay said, to prevent embers from flying in and starting fire inside.
Ignition-prevention experts have previously told Business Insider that they recommend homeowners install noncombustible, one-eighth-inch mesh screening on all vents on the outside of their homes.
Still, the fire getting so close made Borsay nervous until the Los Angeles Fire Department dropped water to snuff it out.
Fire trucks went in and out of the villa that day because of its central location and 50,000-gallon underground water tank.
"If we have a place that's safe, a place with water, they're going to come in and use it to be able to protect us and our surrounding area," Borsay said.
Sharing the water is the neighborly thing to do, he said, but also, "if our neighbors start going down, that could impact us."
Fire hydrants across the museum estate can help fight any fires on-site. They draw from the underground water tank, which feeds automatic sprinklers inside the Getty buildings.
Staff members took turns putting on N95s and goggles, grabbing fire extinguishers, and spending up to 30 minutes outside spraying spot fires. None of them were trained firefighters, but they all had basic fire-extinguisher training.
Bushes, vines, and trees were catching fire from all the flying embers. Putting them out early helped prevent the flames from spreading.
Borsay said that everybody was allowed to leave, but many people chose to stay behind to protect the estate and its ancient statues and artifacts.
"This is everybody's shared cultural history that we're the stewards of," he said.
Unlike the Ranch House, the villa building was "built like a vault," Borsay said.
The villa's concrete and travertine construction makes its walls virtually un-burnable.
"Concrete's lovely. The brutalists were right," Borsay said.
Getty had the villa constructed in the 1960s and 70s as a replica of the Villa dei Papiri in the ancient Roman city of Herculaeneum.
In AD 79, the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius buried the city and the villa.
"He knew that this place burned," Borsay said of J. Paul Getty. "I think that that's part of the reason why it was built the way it was."
Fire is a natural part of the Santa Monica mountains' ecosystem, so brush fires are common.
Fire-rated doors also protect the artworks and artifacts inside the building.
"You can imagine some of our lenders were a little concerned," Borsay said, so he sent them videos of the art inside to show it was safe.
When fire burned through a corridor of trees on the estate, Borsay wasn't worried about the villa building itself.
He was, however, keeping an eye on a nearby elevator shaft.
"All around this elevator it was just huge flames. That was probably the part I was most concerned about," Borsay said.
It's an outdoor elevator, going from the estate's entrance to the outdoor auditorium, but it's also connected to indoor areas. So if fire had gotten into the elevator, it could have spread inside an auxiliary building.
Windows are another major vulnerability for any structure, so keeping them clear of foliage is crucial.
Borsay said the museum groundskeepers had been careful about that.
Landscaping is key to preventing the spread of fire.
Wildfires often spread to new buildings through embers falling and gathering in flammable materials — like dry bushes, firewood piles, or dead leaves clogging roof gutters.
That's why ignition experts recommend keeping up with yardwork and maintaining a 5-foot fuel-free zone around a house or building.
The museum has two gardens. Both were well-watered, so even as embers rained down, they didn't burn.
"We kept an eye on it, but I was less concerned about it. And again, even if this area burns, it's gonna be pretty safe inside," Borsay said.
The villa emerged ashy, but none of its structures burned. The Palisades fire burned for 24 days.
Getty staff began the long process of replacing damaged irrigation and sprinkler equipment, cleaning up ash, and monitoring the facility for looters or new fires.
Flames even reemerged on a hill near the parking lot a week after the fire had passed. Embers had been smoldering in the dirt.
By the time Business Insider visited the facility in February, most of the ash had already been cleared.
There's still a lot of work to do. Conservators are assessing the art to ensure it wasn't damaged. The surrounding area is undergoing its own cleanup and rebuilding process. It's unclear when the museum will reopen.
Even so, the property is a world away from when it was covered in ash and soot.
"It's amazing how clean it looks like right now, because I'll tell you in the days after, it just was a serious mess," Borsay said.
