A British family’s dream of starting a new life in Greece turned into a nightmare when a recent wildfire in the mountainous Aigialeia region completely destroyed the home they were about to move into permanently. Rory and Stefanie — who is pregnant with twins — along with their two eight-year-old daughters, Evangeline and Ivaria, and 19-month-old Athena, had planned to relocate to Greece for good on August 10th. They had already shipped all of their belongings to their new home, never imagining that just days later it would be reduced to ashes.
Read more: British family sold everything for a new life in Greece, but fire destroyed their home just before they moved in
The family had invested more than €300,000 in buying and renovating the property
The property, which they had purchased in 2023, was located in the mountains of Aigialeia. The family had invested more than €300,000 in purchasing and renovating it, with the goal of creating the perfect environment to raise their children and build a new life in the Greek countryside. Today, the family is staying in a one-bedroom apartment in Hastings, East Sussex, as they have nowhere else to go.
“We didn’t just lose a house”
Speaking to the British newspaper Mirror, Stefanie described the family’s devastation in the wake of the disaster. “We are a very resilient family, but this has broken us. The emptiness and grief are overwhelming. A dream and years of hard work were gone in a matter of seconds. We didn’t just lose the home we built — we lost the memories and the life we had created there,” she said. As she explained, the house in Greece represented the opportunity to give their children a better quality of life. For more than twelve years, the family had been living in a one-bedroom apartment, with the parents sleeping on a sofa bed so the children could each have their own space.
Footage of the house before and after the Aigialeia wildfire
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