Photos show 2 key strategies that saved the Getty Villa from fires — and what homeowners can learn from them

Those materials are virtually fire-proof. Essentially, the villa was "built like a vault," Les Borsay, the facility's emergency preparedness specialist, told Business Insider.

In urban conflagrations like the ones that ripped through Los Angeles in January, a wood fence or mulch landscaping can be the fuel that brings the fire to your house.

At the Getty Villa, roofs are made of tile. Wood shake or shingles, of course, are the most flammable roofing material. An ideal fire-resistant roof is made of asphalt, clay tiles, or concrete tiles, according to the California state fire agency, Cal Fire.

If enough embers get in through openings, or if a window breaks from the heat, fire can easily start inside the home.

That's why double-pane windows are the choice of fire-resistant construction experts like Clark Stevens, an architect working with the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Don't forget the garage door, too.

"It's bigger than any window in your house, usually, so these edges are really important," Stevens told BI as he showed off the garage-door seal at a model home he's built in the Santa Monica mountains.

Since people often use garages as storage spaces, they're also often full of flammable items. They can be a huge vulnerability if they're not properly sealed.

Installing metal mesh screening with 1/8-inch spacing — or, better yet, 1/16-inch — can prevent embers from accumulating inside an attic or crawlspace and starting a fire inside your home.

It involves a 50,000-gallon tank of water deep underground, a system of pipes and fire hydrants, and sprinklers throughout all the buildings on the property.

According to Borsay, the groundskeeping team regularly cleared tree branches up to six feet above the ground.

On the hillside where fire traveled down toward the villa, in this photo, you can see where flames burned up the trunks of trees, but not into their leafy crowns. That helps prevent fire from jumping tree to tree, spreading more quickly.

Flying embers can ignite plants or leaves in the yard or a roof gutter, which can then ignite your home. That's where defensible space comes in.

The forest "may be showering us with embers, but what's burning our homes down and forcing us to run and evacuate is human fuels," Durland, who has 30 years of federal wildfire management experience, told BI after the Palisades fire.

"It's bark mulch, it's ornamental grasses. It's structures that are readily flammable" — all things humans can change.

A vehicle that goes up in flames can quickly ignite nearby structures, such as a car in a driveway helping fire spread to a house's outer wall.

Cal Fire recommends keeping vehicles at least five feet away from the house.

At the Getty, staff simply didn't want their cars to burn, so they moved them into the underground parking garage.

After the five-foot no-fuel zone, Cal Fire recommends homeowners maintain a 30-foot "lean, clean, and green" zone.

That's certainly on display at the Getty Villa. It's still standing after the most destructive fire in the region's history because of its builders' construction choices and diligent groundskeeping.