Hacker Remix

Why the Getty Center Is the Safest Place for Art During a Fire (2019)

105 points by wallflower 3 months ago | 43 comments

mycentstoo 3 months ago

Additional Context: The Getty Villa which is on the border of Malibu and Pacific Palisades was the structure that was threatened by fire directly. This article is about the Getty Center which lies in Brentwood and fires did not reach it.

Center: 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90049

Villa: 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272

sbuttgereit 3 months ago

The reason this article is likely appearing now is because the Getty Center proper is currently in a zone which is under evacuation orders:

"The Getty Center, situated in Brentwood, draws 1.8 million visitors annually and houses hundreds of centuries-old art pieces from renowned artists such as Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Monet.

But even though as of Saturday, the center was included in a mandatory evacuation zone as a result of the Palisades Fire expansion into Brentwood, the center insisted its campus is the "safest place possible" for its massive art collection."

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/heres-how-the-getty...

This news report links the the article posted.

As of my check right now (1/12/25, noon Pacific Time), the Palisades Fire is still only 11% contained, so it's not yet over.

mycentstoo 3 months ago

Oh I know, I live very close to there. I just wanted to add insight for those that might not be familiar with those being two separate things.

fmajid 3 months ago

Will it remain the safest place if there are no people left on-site to staff the fire-protection mechanisms because of a mandatory evacuation order?

bugglebeetle 3 months ago

The Getty has an endowment in the billions and an entire team devoted to this that is permitted to be on site, coordinates with local fire and police services, etc. The entire center is also built into the hillside, with fireproof vaults in the underground levels, so there is no real risk to any of the collections.

WalterBright 3 months ago

If people evacuate before putting the art in the vaults, the vaults won't work. Remember the Titanic when the life boats left half full?

mystified5016 3 months ago

"Yeah and what if you just forget to use your fancy equipment? Not so smart now, huh?!"

You totally showed them

moralestapia 3 months ago

An observation on how this has become extremely common nowadays.

Here, at work, in real life. People just argue with whatever dumb thing they can come up with, for the sake of arguing, it makes them feel smart. It's really hard to have a meaningful conversation with them.

I go to a couple philosophical discussion groups and the occasional town hall meeting. People just can't get their imaginary needs satisfied.

"But that area seems unsafe"

"We could hire a security guard to be around"

"But what if the security guard is a criminal, like in that one episode of muh favorite tv show"

"We could do an extensive background check, work with companies that have a good reputation, ..."

"But what if they make all that up, I saw that in a movie"

And nothing. ever. gets. done.

Btw, I've even seen people get a small round of applause by their peers after making one of such arguments irl. This comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn200lvmTZc.

quasse 3 months ago

This is basically how every discussion around building more transit in Seattle goes. The town hall meetings feel like an episode of Parks and Rec.

MichaelZuo 3 months ago

Isn’t it by definition that the median person making an argument will be mediocre?

bugglebeetle 3 months ago

> The Getty has […] an entire team devoted to this that is permitted to be on site.

cge 3 months ago

Yes: you can notice this, for example, in the announcements they put out while the area around the Getty Villa evacuated and then burned, where they pointed out that non-emergency staff had evacuated. Similarly, I think JPL always had (emergency) staff present, and their own firefighting resources.

Having heard about wildfire policies for some high-profile institutions in fire-prone areas, they'll often have their own procedures, in coordination with local authorities, which may not involve evacuating when others do, and may involve people coming to the site when others are evacuating.

DiscourseFan 3 months ago

I imagine they have a number of life-support systems to ensure the staff can hang out in the building for a while in case of a severe natural disaster.

varelse 3 months ago

[dead]

DidYaWipe 3 months ago

Yep. The Getty Villa was threatened, and is not discussed in the linked article.

I enjoy the villa at least as much as the main center. It would be a huge loss.

alexwasserman 3 months ago

Very interesting to see the thought put into it. And given the cultural and historic significance, they’re literally irreplaceable. Must be a fun exercise in incident management and prevention.

I found this interesting too - https://www.getty.edu/news/the-hidden-engineering-protecting...

An article about their approach to earthquake protection.

In both cases it looks like they’re leading these sorts of engineering developments.

mxxx 3 months ago

There’s a museum built a few years ago in regional Australia that was also designed with bushfire resistance in mind.

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-cultu...

axlee 3 months ago

Note: while this is a 2019 article, the Getty Center has not burned during the 2025 Palisades fire.

DidYaWipe 3 months ago

The Getty Villa was far more threatened by the Palisades Fire than the center.

lambda 3 months ago

The fire is still burning, is only partially contained, has gotten close to the Center, and the winds are forecast to pick up again tomorrow. So there's still a chance it will be at risk.

Now, they've had days to prepare for this, and apparently have plenty of contingencies in place, but this is still relevant the fire could get there.

KennyBlanken 3 months ago

No, but it's been inside the evacuation area for a while:

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0876669,-118.5930521,12z/dat...

It's also relevant because the Getty Center has been rather smug about how awesome their fire protection is.

hn_throwaway_99 3 months ago

> It's also relevant because the Getty Center has been rather smug about how awesome their fire protection is.

I think your "smug" comment is unwarranted. They put a ton of solid engineering thought, money and planning into protecting the center from fire. Nothing is 100% but I think their confidence is warranted.

Related, the Getty Villa right in the middle of the Palisades also put a lot of thought, planning and money into fire prevention, and despite being directly in the path of the Palisades firestorm, no structures on the Villa burned

KennyBlanken 3 months ago

They are being really smug, talking about designs and systems that mean nothing when you've got temperatures outside the building hot enough to melt aluminum engine blocks, infrared radiation intense enough to set fire to things hundreds of feet away - as well as very low oxygen and very high CO/CO2 levels along with dozens of different toxic gasses - all of which HEPA filtration won't do squat about.

A "stone facade" doesn't stop +1200 degree temperatures, especially when everything on the outside will undergo incredible thermal expansion and at the least open up gaps. Steel expands about 1-2% for just an increase to 100 degrees C. 300C means about 3-4% expansion. And then there's the huge expanses of windows which will shatter or pop out - and even if they don't, the intense IR radiation will by and large go through them.

People don't realize just how insanely hot wildfires get. Go look at the pictures of neighborhoods that have burnt- they're leveled with the exception of some chimneys, steel girders for houses that have them (most these days don't, builders have been using wood-composite beams) iron fences, car bodies. Everything else is burned or melted.

There isn't a building in the world that will stop the megawatts of heat energy per square meter wildfires can generate in IR radiation.

jjulius 3 months ago

>They are being really smug...

Just out of sheer curiosity, I would be tremendously curious to understand what kind of personal/professional background/experience you have that would qualify you to certify their emergency systems as functionally ineffective and their messaging "smug".

hn_throwaway_99 3 months ago

Yes, wildfires get incredibly hot. But the fires essentially always travel by embers or direct contact with fire - your comments about IR radiation seem to imply that IR alone will cause ignition, which is rarely if ever the case.

Here is a story about a bunch of people who survived the Camp fire in Paradise, CA, surrounded by the raging inferno, by staying in the middle of a parking lot: https://www.firehouse.com/operations-training/wildland/news/...

PaulDavisThe1st 3 months ago

It is rarely the case, indeed.

However, in incidents like e.g. the Fort McMurray fire (Alberta, 2016), this is precisely what happens. One property with a heavy fuel load fanned by strong winds (i.e. plentiful O2 supply) gets hot enough that it causes ignition in a neighboring exposure.

In Ft. McMurray, there were documented cases of an entire 4+ bedroom house being reduced to ash in roughly 5 minutes. The heat generated by that process is easily sufficient to cause ignition in buildings <typical suburban layout> apart.

hn_throwaway_99 3 months ago

Even in that case I'm sure a huge part of the heat transfer is convection, especially with the high winds.

Comment I was replying to was talking about IR igniting things by shining through windows, which I believe is mostly bullshit.

hyeonwho4 3 months ago

Stone doesn't burn, and neither does concrete. Glass melts. Steel evidently didn't burn at the temperatures these fires got to. So it makes sense that a building made of concrete and steel with stone facades and fiberglass insulation would survive the fire, especially after clearing out and hydrating the surrounding landscape so it wouldn't have the density or flammability of a forest. The Getty Center may have gotten lucky, but they might have also earned their "luck" through investment and planning.

Cheer2171 3 months ago

Never have I seen a better case of projection on HN. You come off as so fucking smug yourself.

marze 3 months ago

Everyone with a fire-hardened house should be feeling good. If all Pacific Palisades houses were fire-hardened, the fire would have burned vegetation but few houses.

Even modest fire hardening would help. If a wood-frame house burns, it is a danger to all nearby houses. Hardening reduces the chain reaction potential.

pwarner 3 months ago

There's just not enough talk about this. This is the actual failure of government, not focusing enough on surviving fires

mmooss 3 months ago

How is it a failure of government? The people of these areas reasonably have not wanted spend large amounts of their money to prevent unusual disasters like this one. Do you spend that in your community?

weaksauce 3 months ago

the cost would be enormous. it’s in an earthquake zone and it needs to withstand that. there’s already way too few houses for people at a reasonable cost. they’ve already evacuated and only a handful of lives have been lost to the people that stayed behind. it’s not normal santa ana winds it’s the hardest winds i’ve seen here in decades... probably 100 years or more. people are the important thing here.

mmooss 3 months ago

How effective is fire-hardening in these conditions? And how much would it cost? And finally, does anyone know how fire-hardened structures have actually performed?