[HN Gopher] Why the Getty Center Is the Safest Place for Art Dur...
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Why the Getty Center Is the Safest Place for Art During a Fire
(2019)
Author : wallflower
Score : 57 points
Date : 2025-01-12 18:06 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.getty.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.getty.edu)
| axlee wrote:
| Note: while this is a 2019 article, the Getty Center has not
| burned during the 2025 Palisades fire.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| 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/...
| hyeonwho4 wrote:
| 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.
| jjulius wrote:
| >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".
| marze wrote:
| 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.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| The Getty Villa was far more threatened by the Palisades Fire
| than the center.
| mycentstoo wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| > The Getty has [...] an entire team devoted to this that
| is permitted to be on site.
| cge wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| "Yeah and what if you just forget to use your fancy
| equipment? Not so smart now, huh?!"
|
| You totally showed them
| moralestapia wrote:
| 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.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| 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.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| I guess it is too expensive to have a fm-200 based fire
| suppression system? They say they have sprinklers as a last
| resort but I'm guessing it would destroy most of the art if you
| needed to use them.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Most art is sealed into covered frames. You also design fire
| suppression sprinklers to start in outer rooms. Smoke is a far
| greater danger to art in a fire.
| popalchemist wrote:
| The art at the Getty is not sealed.
| cududa wrote:
| Did some googling, and from what I can find, there's one fm-200
| based museum suppression system in Cincinnati - which is also
| the home of Proctor and Gamble, a manufacturer of
| Hydrofluorocarbons.
|
| I'm guessing there's a pretty good reason no one put these in
| museums/ they tried and they didn't work.
|
| I tend to think of property insurance companies having goals
| that are the most "morally aligned" with the goals of
| civilization.
|
| They don't want fires, floods, etc to happen, or they lose
| money. They spend a lot of money researching climate patterns
| and construction standards, lobby for climate policies and new
| building standards, etc.
|
| I'm sure insuring a museum and the risk of a payout is a dicey
| endeavor. The companies insuring them have probably lit many
| mock-museums on fire to decide what suppression system/ designs
| they'll insure
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| FM200 is not the only system available - Inergen, Novec 1230,
| CO2, etc (nobody has used Halon in ages if they can avoid it,
| as it's toxic.)
|
| Gaseous fire suppression systems have numerous requirements
| that make them unsuited for a large publicly accessible
| space. There's oxygen displacement; most of them are
| "nontoxic" to breathe but still displace oxygen, so you have
| to have various measures to keep from killing people - that
| could range from delayed discharge up to SCBA stations (and
| staff training, maintenance, etc.)
|
| The other problem is that you need sufficient concentration
| of the agent; the concentration varies, and some need higher
| concentrations (and better sealing) than others. That means
| quite a lot of work if the space/building wasn't built with
| it in mind. Even for a relatively small and simple server
| room, gaseous fire suppression installation is expensive and
| a general pain in the ass.
|
| The systems are intended for spaces that aren't normally
| occupied. Vaults/storage for example, and industrial spaces
| (electrical substations, for example.)
| cduzz wrote:
| I thought _halon_ was "harmless" to people, but mixing
| halon _with fire_ produces nasty poisons.
|
| The vast majority of fire suppression events I've heard of
| (in a DC or similar environment) are unintentional, meaning
| the halon wouldn't be toxic (according to my potentially
| flawed memory).
|
| Certainly, if there's been a legit fire suppression event,
| you wait for people with the hard-hats to clear the
| facility. Of course, you should do the same if there's been
| a no-fire suppression event, but ideally your fire
| suppression mechanism doesn't kill the people in the room
| needlessly...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's not really for this sort of threat. Those systems
| displace oxygen in a confined space and into the are intended
| to stop combustion originating in that space.
|
| They may have a system like that in a vault but not for the
| whole facility.
| cge wrote:
| In addition to other comments: there are also specialized
| sprinklers to minimize both the risk of inadvertent damage
| (they point out their sprinkler systems are dry by default,
| which is not typical), and to minimize damage on correct
| activation: eg, typical sprinklers turn on permanently, often
| by a vial breaking, but if I recall specialized museum/library
| sprinklers exist that can turn on and off depending on
| conditions.
| alexwasserman wrote:
| 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.
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