Drawn to Help

A watercolor artist made a remarkable offer to people who lost their homes to the Los Angeles fires: "I will paint it for free"

- BY Sydney Page FROM THE WASHINGTON POST

After the Palisades fire, Jordan Heber decided to help in a way only an artist could.

THE PALISADES FIRE in Los Angeles burned Charlotte Tragos's home to the ground.

The height chart from when she was a child was marked on the kitchen wall. Family heirlooms filled the cupboards. Her parents' wedding video from the 1990s was stashed away in the basement. All of it is gone.

"It was a pretty special and unique house," says Tragos, who fled with her parents, her younger sister and their three dogs when the fire broke out on Jan. 7, 2025. All the teenager took with her was her high school diploma, her dog's ashes and a pair of sneakers.

"The streets were packed with people running, driving on the wrong side of the road," she says, adding that everyone knew they were running for their lives.

A few days after the fire started, a friend shared a video with her of a Los Angeles artist offering to create, for free, watercolor paintings of people's homes before they were scorched.