17 employees helped save the Getty Villa from the fires. They're telling other museums how it was done

On Tuesday, Jan. 7, at about 7 a.m., the Getty’s Emergency Planning Specialist Les Borsay arrived at the Getty Villa in Malibu.

“This was not normally a day I would have necessarily been out there,” Borsay told LAist.

He was there with several other staffers from the Getty’s Brentwood campus to test some of the Villa’s fire suppression equipment, which was taking longer than expected.

Then came the message from the Getty in Brentwood: a small brush fire up started up at the Highlands, sparked by embers of the Palisades Fire, he said.

Les Borsay, emergency planning specialist at the Getty Trust

(

The Getty Trust

)

For the next 28 hours, Borsay and 16 other staffers organized themselves to supplement fire department efforts and along the way contributed to helping keep the Getty Villa and its priceless art collections from going up in flames.

The Getty Villa's emergency operations center

(

The Getty Trust

)

Now, nearly a month later, administrators of cultural institutions around the country are coming to Borsay to learn what he and his staff did, how they did it, and what they learned so they themselves can close any disaster safety gaps in their own plans.

Putting out spot fires with boots and fire extinguishers

After the start of the brush fire, the museum was closed down and the decision was made to tell non-emergency staff to go home. Borsay and the 16 others volunteered to stay.

From a conference room at the Villa, Borsay and others watched security camera feeds of the flames as they approached the perimeter of the 64-acre property. They kept a close eye on the northeast corner, near Los Liones Drive.

“We have a security kiosk there at our back gate. We had to pull that officer and make sure that they were safe,” he said. “That's when it starts becoming a real situation — OK, this fire is here."

Teams of two people

Borsay organized teams of at least two people, who wore N95 masks and goggles.

Spot fires from the Palisades Fire break out at the Getty Villa.

(

The Getty Trust

)

“Some goggles were better than others,” Borsay said, but those were all the equipment they had.

In all, 16 people, along with Borsay, were going out to extinguish spot fires around the campus.

Borsay also ran the command center.

“Fire extinguishers, we had them in the vehicles. We were pulling them out of the other buildings to put in the vehicles so that they could be used to go and hit these little fires,” Borsay said.

The teams would then return to the Emergency Operations Center to stay out of the smoke and ash and to replenish their energy.

Borsay commandeered sandwiches, cookies, and chips left in the museum's catering area for the crew.

“They could come inside for a second, get a drink of water, be inside for another 20 minutes or so and then rotate back out,” Borsay said.

They used boots and fire extinguishers to put out fires and help firefighters who arrived to fight the fire that day.

The fires were less threatening at about 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Borsay said, and flames subsided at about midnight. Meanwhile, the Palisades Fire continued to burn.

The next day, Getty CEO Katherine Fleming told news reporters the Villa remained safe and intact. Borsay had stayed the night, along with most others, and by noon returned home to Eagle Rock.

“It felt like the worst part was over,” Borsay said.

Key takeaways from their DIY firefighting

The Getty had done a lot to plan for a potential fire running up the canyons around the Villa.

However, the experience of Borsay and the other staffers who stayed revealed some gaps.

• The ABC fire extinguishers are dry chemical and not very effective in the strong winds that made the fires so dangerous — water fire extinguishers would have been better
• It was a good choice to get staff out of the museum early on
• Practices like shutting off outside air and taping doors to make sure smoke and ash didn't enter rooms worked
• People went above and beyond their job descriptions
• Sharing these practices with other cultural institutions is key

“ I learned that the people I work with are not just amazing, but even more amazing than I could have imagined,” Borsay said.

Other museums want to know

The Getty hosted a large cultural property protection conference last September. Some of the attendees reached out to Borsay, he said, to learn first about how he and the museum were doing. Then, for details about how he and his staff helped protect the Villa from being engulfed in flames.

The amphitheater at the Getty Villa with the glow of the Palisades Fire in the background.

(

The Getty Trust

)

He said he’s been asked to make a full presentation at this year’s conference. And next week he’s talking to the Cultural Safeguard Alliance, a network formed among cultural institutions to protect cultural property.

“[I’m going to give] a basic briefing on what happened and what we did and how we protected [the Villa],” Borsay said.

But this is not the happy ending. Natural disasters are never in the city’s rearview mirror.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the L.A. fires, “The Big One.” While these fires are historic in nature, the longstanding threat of a massive earthquake also looms on L.A.’s horizon.

“It's going to be a bad day when the Big One happens. I don't think anybody's questioning that,” Borsay said.

A large magnitude earthquake will cause different damage, but the experience of going through the recent fire storm, Borsay said, has helped him and his institution prepare.