<div><strong>What Happened</strong>
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<div>On the afternoon of August 7, 2026, Carmen stepped outside her home and smelled a different quality of smoke.
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<div>Less than two years earlier, she and her husband Ruben had moved back to Ruben’s rural childhood home outside Summerland, BC to help support his aging parents. It was their dream to move to the country; they were small-scale city farmers for decades, saving up for this goal.
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<div>When Ruben’s parents’ health took a downturn, they decided the family homestead (fondly known as Faulder Farm) was the best move for them to start their new life chapter – which meant starting from scratch on raw land in a corner of the acreage. After the move, Carmen began rescuing wild horses at the local auction, Ruben built infrastructure for their home and improved the commercial garlic farm, and they grew a large garden and raised animals.
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<div>The Okanagan is wildfire country, and they could smell smoke on most days in late summer.
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<div>But this was different.
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<div>Seven kilometres from their land, a spark grew rapidly into the massive Bald Range Wildfire – one of BC’s most ferocious wildfires of 2026.
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<div>Black smoke rolled in currents over the hills toward their land. Carmen and Ruben had an evacuation protocol in place, but only had only minutes to enact their emergency plan.
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<div>Carmen packed her mother and father-in-law and her young-adult child into the family car with a bag of provisions for each, and the family’s cats. She gave her sheep and pigs extra food and water, dragged the irrigation to their mobile shelter to keep them as safe as possible, and then released her horses to run on their own (there was no time to pack panicking animals into transport).
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<div>Ruben turned on the PTO water pump he had installed earlier this year. There is no fire department or fire insurance for their unincorporated community of Faulder: rural residents need to fend for themselves. The PTO pump takes water from the creek and to a fire hose, protecting buildings and animals. It needs to be manually operated, so Ruben stayed behind while Carmen and family sped down the gravel road to the nearby town of Summerland, driving right through the fire with flames on both sides of their driveway and down the road.
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<div><strong>The Damage</strong>
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<div>After several hours of drenching their property with water, the fire was too big and too hot. The pump ran out of fuel, the embers were landing everywhere. Ruben fled to a nearby low creek and stayed under a bridge for protection for the entire night.
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<div>He watched and listened as the fire destroyed everything:
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<li>The “south house” built by hand in the 1980s using earth-bermed passive solar house design, including a one-of-a-kind split level indoor greenhouse
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<li>The “north house” built using insulated concrete in 2010 to be an accessible aging-in-place dwelling with universal design principles
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<li>Two RVs and a camper
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<li>Carmen and Ruben’s vehicle
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<li>A nearly-finished tiny-home-office for Carmen to run her two businesses out of
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<li>A cistern house built by Ruben in 2024 that held 3400 gallons of water
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<li>A pump house and an orchard shed
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<li>A large welding workshop with storage level above
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<li>A prefab studio outbuilding used as a jewelry-making studio
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<li>Three shipping containers full of farming and building materials
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<li>All contents of these buildings — decades upon decades of precious items
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<li>A historic log cabin built over a hundred years ago by E. Robert “Bob” Faulder including a heritage apple tree
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<li>The power poles they had recently purchased and installed
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<li>A lot of irrigation infrastructure
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<li>5400 bulbs of planted garlic including special heritage varieties specialized to the region over decades. 
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<div>The only structure to survive is a 10x10 mobile animal barn parked in an irrigated field, and (miraculously) a chicken coop.
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<div>In early September 2026, Carmen and Ruben were allowed to return to their home once for a one-hour escorted viewing to understand the extent of the damage. They found that unfortunately their 7 young piglets and a lamb were predated on by coyotes and did not survive. The remaining four pigs have been boarded at their prior home, and the surviving lamb has returned to her home flock. Thankfully all the horses survived. They followed the creek to a nearby farm and herded up with another group of neighbour horses. They will be boarded until Carmen and Ruben can bring them back to Faulder Farm.
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<div><strong>What This Means</strong>
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<div>Carmen and Ruben have nowhere else to go. Ruben’s family has been living on the land since before there was a telephone line. They put their life savings into moving to the Okanogan to support his parents’ aging-in-place and her child’s dynamic disabilities. These two generations still need daily care.
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<div>There is no choice but to clean up – and rebuild.
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<div>They have made the decision to return to the land as soon as they are allowed to.
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<div>Once there, Carmen will continue running her online businesses that support the family. Ruben will build ad-hoc infrastructure. They will clean up what the fire has destroyed and plant crops again.
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<div>Carmen and Ruben will rebuild on a smaller scale, with structures easier to defend and more mobile if repeat evacuations are needed.
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<div>If you’d like to get to know Carmen and Ruben directly and hear how they plan to rebuild, watch their interview on CBC National <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/Db6DMLYP8Fu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>
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<div><strong>What your Donation will help Support</strong>
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<li>Cleaning up the burned detritus and rebuilding from scratch is a major undertaking - and an expensive one.
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<li>Every donation made on this page immediately supports this family’s wellness and their ability to re-make a home.
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<div><strong>Here are some items and actions that your donation will directly provide:</strong>
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<li>Farm tools and implements
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<li>Power tools for carpentry and construction
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<li>Temporary shelter (a used RV has now been secured thanks to the generous donations of this GoFundMe)
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<li>Generator for temporary power through the winter
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<li>Restoring water and sanitation pipes, including a new septic tank
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<li>Horse fencing
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<li>The purchase and self-installation of electrical Power Poles
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<li>Reestablishing a commercial garlic crop
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<li>Construction materials such as 2x6s, studs, fasteners, and roofing
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<li>Building Ruben’s parents’ new home
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<div><strong>Where to go for more information</strong>
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<li><a href="https://vimeo.com/showcase/12387989" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Videos by Carmen and Ruben</a>
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<li><a href="https://www.carmenspagnola.com/hello" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">More links</a>
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<div>--
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<div>[here is the information shared on August 7th when this fundraiser was created]
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<div>Hello dear reader,
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<div>With a heavy heart I must announce that Carmen Spagnola's home has been lost to wildfire today Friday August 7th. Carmen lives on a rural farm in BC's Okanagan with her beloved husband Ruben, her adult child, and her elderly in-laws.
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<div>They have lost all of their belongings to the fire which is still burning.
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<div>Anything you can contribute to support will go directly to them. We will share more updates as they come in.
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Anna Marie Becker-Hoover

Megan Adam

Anonymous

Deanne Matthews

Susan Finkleman

Shila Soni

Elita Silins

Mary Bullock

Breanne Ward

Anne Murphy

Ryan Brennan

Miranda Duffy

Martin Mckibbin

Emergency support for Carmen and family

Emergency support for Carmen and family

Still $10,000 to go. Help us build momentum.