Episode 42: Tracy Droz Tragos
Tracy Droz Tragos: And like, did I look the part? Was I, you know, needy enough? Was I taking something from somebody else who actually really needed these things more than I did?
Josh Caldwell: Hello, my atypical daydreamers. Welcome to the podcast, a show about life on the road when you're far from routines and comfort zones. My guest today is Tracy Droz Tragos. She's a documentary filmmaker, writer, and was recently displaced by the LA fires that destroyed much of the Pacific Palisades. Two years ago, my family and I moved to Berlin, Germany. We reduced everything we owned down to one single palette. That process forced us to ask, what really matters? What can we let go of? And what can't we bear to lose? Now imagine losing not just your TV, gardening tools, the contents of your sock drawer, but the irreplaceable things. Your kids' drawings, old family photos, even your whole life's work. It's hard to fathom that kind of loss. Today's guest gives us a window into what it means to face that kind of grief, to slow down, to feel the weight of it, and to somehow find a way to begin again.
Tracy Droz Tragos: There are things called acts of God. Natural disasters, whether it's the universe, whether it's fate, whether it's destiny. I have had brushes with fire throughout my life. I've evacuated when I used to live in Topanga Canyon and had to be away from my home for five days, but my home didn't burn. I was able to go back. I did a documentary about the Paradise fires in Northern California and saw the aftermath of that. It was a pretty searing experience. And then there was January 7th, 2025.
I'm in my yoga clothes. My kids are still off school after the winter break. And I see smoke on the ridge. It feels very far away, but you can see the clouds, and I can also actually see flames. And that was what really struck me at the time. Like there are flames that I can see, and that is probably not good.
Tracy Droz Tragos: No one told us to evacuate. There was no police car going down all the roads. We just thought, this doesn't seem good, let's just get out of the way for the firefighters and go somewhere else for a little bit. Of course, as the hours wore on, we realized that this was a big, big thing.
We evacuated within 45 minutes of seeing the flames, but we didn't pack as if we were going to be gone for a long time. It wasn't until we were up in Santa Barbara, two hours away, that we realized how big the fires were and that we were going to lose everything. Our house was going to burn to the ground with all of our kids' stuff, all of my husband's work stuff, all of my work stuff, all of the raw footage from all of the documentaries I'd made, all of the documentaries I hoped to make that were in progress, all of my camera equipment. Just everything burnt. And it was a shocking event. Only made more shocking when my mother also lost her home. She lived within ten minutes of us, and I had backup stuff at her house. So it was both her losing all of her stuff and me losing all of mine.
What happens in the aftermath of a natural disaster is there are helpers, people that show up to give aid. And I'm pretty skeptical about all that kind of stuff. I'm somebody who tells other people's stories, follows other people around with a camera, writes about other people. But I'm not the subject. I'm not in the center of it. I'm not the person who people are rushing to give aid to.
Tracy Droz Tragos: In the first few weeks after the fire, there was a clothing drive at the local Episcopal church. And the truth is I was living in the same sweatpants I'd evacuated in, and I didn't have any underpants or bras. There are some random things you don't realize you don't have when you've evacuated so quickly and that you really kind of need. At the same time, I was not destitute. I was not sleeping on a cot in a Red Cross shelter. By this point, insurance had kicked in so we were in an Airbnb. But I do remember needing clothes, not being able to walk into clothing stores. Where do you even begin? Can I help you? Are you looking for anything special today? And I'm like, I need everything. And it all ends up costing so much more money than you ever imagined when you're starting from scratch.
I spent a bit of time in the parking lot outside of that Montecito Episcopal church. I saw very nice people that maybe kind of look like me exiting their nice cars with boxes of things, looking very enthusiastic about giving these things to fire victims. And I could not possibly imagine walking in there. I just couldn't handle the what at the time felt like a kind of humiliation. I would be passing these tables and all these fancy ladies would have long faces and we're so sorry, we're so sorry.
Tracy Droz Tragos: And like, did I look the part? Was I needy enough? Was I taking something from somebody else who actually really needed these things more than I did? Because eventually, in the fullness of time, I would buy some things. And I had a stylist friend who got some fancy designer things she gave me. So I had resources.
Anyway, I turned away. I couldn't do it. I couldn't go in. I couldn't face it.
Josh Caldwell: Hey, it's Josh. Hope you're enjoying the podcast. And if so, are you wanting more road stories? Well, good news. I've got you covered. Consider becoming a patron. You'll have access to loads of great bonus stories that there just wasn't time for. And you'll be supporting a truly independent podcast. Find the link in the show notes and thanks. Now back to the show.
Tracy Droz Tragos: We waited to the very last day, which was a Friday, when we had to start clearing the debris from our lot. We signed up for the very last day that these volunteers were going to come to help sift through the ashes to see if there would be anything to recover.
Chris had done this, my husband, unbeknownst to me. This was an organization called Samaritan's Purse. Leading up to this, there were a lot of questions. Are they going to try to make us evangelicals? Because Samaritan's Purse is Billy Graham's organization, now run by his son. What is this all going to be like? I asked a fire friend who had relocated up to Ventura. Did she have her debris removal a couple of days before? And I said, how is it? Did they pray with you? And she said, they pray three times. There are three prayers. I'm sharing this with my husband over a text thread, and he's like, my god, you're kidding me.
I had been considering just letting Chris go by himself. And I realized then that he needed support, someone else to go with him. Because Chris's biggest concern was that he didn't want to lie to these people. He didn't want to pretend that he was moved by the Spirit of God if he wasn't. And he also just wanted to do the work. He didn't want to stand around praying. He wanted to sift through the ashes and see if he could find anything. He was particularly fixated on seeing if he could find this metal horse's head that he had on a shelf that he was sure would have survived.
Tracy Droz Tragos: So we drove the two hours down to our lot with all the debris on it. We also had a bulldozer there because it was going to begin right after we left to actually remove some of the big pieces. The problem for us was that there weren't really fine ashes to sift through. All of our walls had kind of fallen on top of each other. There were three floors, if you included my basement office. Things were buried under chunks of plaster. It wasn't just an easy archaeological dig.
They showed up in three cars. The tool truck with the big Good Samaritan on the side of it. A van with the rest of the volunteers and the leader. Then another car with two chaplains.
Everybody gets out. I've been prepared by my friend that they're going to start with a prayer. We meet everybody, start to do the getting-to-know-you niceties. The lead guy who drove the tool truck is from Alabama. He's flown here and has been in California all week. It's his first trip to California, to volunteer his time. There is also this entire family from the Central Valley. A mother and a father probably in their forties, and their four kids, college age to teenage age. And they've never been to LA either, even though they're from the Central Valley.
Tracy Droz Tragos: It's still a six-hour drive away. And all of these people have been sleeping on cots in a church in downtown LA for a week. And I'm thinking, my god, these people have been sleeping on cots in order to come and help Chris and me. Skeptical, left-brain Westsiders in LA, on the edges of the entertainment industry, basically fancy pants people. And they're here with these open hearts, open evangelical hearts, and their hearts are open to help us with this excavation.
The chaplains pray with us and then they go off. It's a very straightforward prayer. Thank you for coming together. Thank you for letting us do this with you. Hope that you find peace in your time of trouble. Then we get to sifting the ashes. We learn about these people's lives. The lead guy, his life, growing up with a dad who was married five times and a whole bunch of half siblings. He's also a veteran. He's got a prosthetic hook for a hand, which is frankly quite useful when he's doing debris removal. They spent four hours with us. We sifted through what I thought was my office and found a lot of butterfly clips and old typewriters. Chris never found his big metal horse's head. We found very, very little. But the experience was the gift, how hokey that sounds. Being with these people from the Central Valley.
Tracy Droz Tragos: They gave us a Bible at the end where they had written in it. The handwriting wasn't the handwriting of people who had necessarily graduated high school. They left very heartfelt messages. Thank you for letting us sift through the ashes. Hope you will find comfort. The final prayer, the oldest daughter led it. Very much of a, I hope you'll get through this. Non-denominational. And the thing that struck Chris and me later is that we were in a circle. They circled up to pray. And before they left, they said, okay, let's circle up. We took off all the PPE we were wearing. And I sort of had my hands clasped. But then this girl who was leading the prayer put her arm around me, and Chris was on my other side, and he put his arm around me, and everybody had their arms around each other.
Tracy Droz Tragos: I found myself leaning my head on her shoulder. And that was totally fine. I mean, she didn't recoil or anything. But I just kind of leaned my head on her shoulder and she said very nice things. She thanked us so much for the gift that we had given them, which really struck me. Are you kidding me? You just spent four hours of your time exposing yourself to this fine dust, sleeping on a cot for a week, and you're thanking me. And then they left. They got back in their cars. They were gonna go clean the place where they'd slept. And they waved and smiled.
Chris and I, being the snarky people that we are, we looked up on ChatGPT, okay, well, are they like good evangelicals or bad evangelicals? Do they say you can pray the gay away? What kind of people are they? But I have to say, despite all of that, it was some of the most moving help that we've received. And I think Chris and I needed that kind of circling up, that physical contact in a way, more than we knew. There was no circling up, no group hug, no group prayer, no group anything since the fire. As very left-brained fancy people, we just get to the spreadsheets with the insurance adjusters. And there's very little circling up. And I got a lot out of that.
Josh Caldwell: I want to thank Tracy for sharing her experience. Be sure to check out her Substack, On Fire, a beautiful exploration about life in transition. Link in the show notes. Do you know someone who was affected by the recent LA fires? Whether first person or just any Angelino, text them this episode. They might really appreciate it. This podcast is created and produced by me, Josh Caldwell. Music by Visual Aid, my side music project. General support and copywriting by Miranda Caldwell. Thank you for listening, and I hope you come back next time.
