Smoke from the Palisades Hearth rises over the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California on January 11, 2025. Agence France-Presse
LOS ANGELES — After ripping via hundreds of buildings, wildfires in Los Angeles had been looming Saturday towards the celebrated Getty Middle and its priceless assortment.
Nestled within the mountains above Los Angeles, the famed artwork museum is inside a brand new evacuation warning zone because the Palisades Hearth roars east towards populated areas.
Dubbed a “stunning fortress” and constructed of fire-resistant travertine stone, in addition to cement and metal, the middle has drawn museum specialists from around the globe to watch its security system.
READ: Paris Hilton amongst celebrities who misplaced properties to devastating LA wildfires
Its roofs are coated with crushed stone to forestall embers igniting, and even within the gardens, resilient vegetation had been chosen.
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Inside, the galleries may be closed off with a vault-like double door that, museum officers say, is virtually impenetrable.
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“Getty workers, the artwork collections and buildings stay protected from the Palisades Hearth,” the museum mentioned Friday, hours earlier than the evacuation warning.
“The menace continues to be occurring,” Getty added in an X publish.
READ: LA fires threaten new communities as greatest blaze shifts path
The museum’s distinctive assortment contains 125,000 artworks — together with work by Rembrandt, Turner, Van Gogh and Monet — and 1.4 million paperwork. It additionally homes a analysis hub and a basis.
Museum officers have beforehand mentioned the gathering is protected throughout the heart’s fireproof construction, made up of 300,000 travertine blocks and 12,500 tons of metal bars.
“The Getty was constructed to accommodate worthwhile artwork and maintain it very protected from fires, from earthquakes, from any kind of injury,” mentioned Lisa Lapin, communications vp now and when Getty was threatened by fireplace in 2019.
“We’re actually constructed like an exquisite fortress, and the whole lot inside is sort of protected,” she informed AFP on the time.
Getty shuts its doorways
Constructed greater than twenty years in the past by architect Richard Meier, at a price of $1 billion, the middle’s safety measures additionally embody a million-gallon (3.8-million liter) water tank feeding its irrigation system.
The constructing’s air flow system has an inner recycling system, just like these present in vehicles, stopping smoke from getting into rooms from the skin.
Regardless of such intensive measures, Getty introduced its closure earlier this week “out of warning and to assist alleviate visitors.”
When the 2019 fireplace threatened the middle, it served as a base for firefighters battling the blaze.
Attributable to a tree department falling on energy traces, that fireplace burned 745 acres (300 hectares) and destroyed 10 properties.
A hearth two years prior additionally triggered security measures at Getty, though it affected solely the far facet of an adjoining freeway.
“In each circumstances, we’ve been very assured that the middle is okay,” mentioned Lapin in 2019.
The Palisades Hearth has ravaged greater than 22,000 acres since erupting on Tuesday, and is simply 11 % contained as a collection of fires burn via Los Angeles neighborhoods.
The hearth threatened the separate Getty Villa, which additionally has particular flame resistant protections, earlier within the week.
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Bushes and vegetation across the coastal villa had been burned, however the construction and collections — together with Greek and Roman antiquities — had been spared.