We lost everything in a forest fire!

Dear reader,

We are Brenda and Federico.

The biggest tragedy of our life hit us when our house in Patagonia, Argentina was completely destroyed by a huge forest fire. The fire burned down nearly all of the small village we live in.

Federico and I came two years ago into this beautiful mountain village surrounded by untouched nature. We wanted to build a simple life surrounded by the forest. We moved into an abandoned house, and started to restore it to be our home for the decades to come. Integrating into the welcoming community, we felt like we had found our place. We spent all our time, savings and energy on our Patagonian dream home. We rebuilt the structure of the house, and planted our own garden to grow our food.

I (Brenda) am a professional cook, and Federico is a carpenter. We contributed to the village community with the products from our garden: apple juice, fruit jam, medicinal creams, etc. We made this place our tiny shelter. Living with the surrounding nature was a driving force in our life.

Our dream collapsed the 15th of January 2025. Coming back from town, we noticed some forest fires 4 km away from our house. Right after, the sky turned into a black cloud of smoke. Realising that a huge forest fire was starting right in our village, we ran as quick as we could to alert the neighbours.

Most of the community fled their houses instantly, as fighting the fire was a lost battle. We also gave up on all hope of saving our house, as it was too close to the burning trees to survive. Still, we managed to reach our house before the fire did. We filled a backpack and saved some important belongings like passports, but we had to abandon everything we owned from our furniture, books, clothes, tools and paintings to the garden, memories, cups and our favorite board games. We left it all to the fire that left us with nothing but ashes.

We ran to flee the quickly spreading fires. We managed to save two goats and a dog before we ran over to the neighbours house. It was situated so, that with luck it stood a chance to survive the fires. We fought with him for 48 hours to save his house, extinguishing the branches catching fire on the edge of the garden. Thankfully, by collaborating together, we managed.

His house was saved, but ours was not.

Asking for money is not easy for us. Even if we lost all our material belongings, we are so grateful and lucky to be alive. We realise that we are not alone in the situation of facing this huge loss. We have received help from people who welcomed us to temporarily stay over. Now our plan is to work abroad and try to save up enough to one day recover from this hit we took, and rebuild our home in Patagonia.

If you can help us with this, we truly appreciate every donation. Your money will be used on practical necessities, like construction materials for the house itself, tools, a bed and if all the necessities are covered, maybe we even buy again our favourite board game.

The fire did not burn down our will to keep on living our dream. We want to return to our community, build from scratch, and keep on creating beautiful memories in this place where we belong. Your support means a world to us.

Love,

Brenda and Federico

PS: As GoFundMe is not available in Argentina, my friend Arieta from Rota, Spain is the one recieving the donations and then send them to my bank account.