A fast-spreading wildfire in Southern California reached the grounds of the Getty Villa museum north of Santa Monica on Tuesday, but officials said no buildings had burned and the collection was safe.
The Pacific Palisades fire, sparked by a severe storm and prompting mass evacuations in Los Angeles County, burned some trees and vegetation on site at the Getty Villa, but museum leaders said the galleries and archives were protected.
The villa is located along the Pacific Coast Highway and approximately 10 miles from the affiliated Getty Center, site of the world-renowned art institution’s premier museum.
The Getty Villa had made “extensive efforts throughout the year to clear the environment as part of its firefighting efforts,” Katherine E Fleming, president and CEO of the J Paul Getty Trust, said in a statement early Tuesday evening. While the flames reached some of the vegetation on the property, “staff and the collection remain safe,” she said.
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Fire prevention measures at the Villa included on-site water storage, with irrigation immediately deployed across the site on Tuesday morning, Fleming said, adding: “Museum galleries and library archives were sealed off from smoke by state-of-the-art air treatment. systems. The double-walled construction of the galleries also provides important protection for the collections.”
Images circulated on social media show some greenery on fire near a Getty Villa sign, but the video appeared to be of the driveway entrance and a nearby building separate from the villa.
After the Palisades fire broke out around 10:30 a.m., nearly 3,000 acres had burned by evening. An unusual and violent storm spread the fire, burning homes and forcing thousands of people to flee the Pacific Palisades, an affluent community along the ocean.
The Villa is a free museum with Greek and Roman antiquities in a reconstructed Roman mansion. It was quickly closed to non-emergency services on Tuesday morning and will remain closed to the public until at least next Monday.
The Getty Center, which houses a museum and research institutes, was also previously threatened by nearby fires but has extensive prevention plans in place to protect its vast collection.
