A couple left homeless in last month’s floods may spend Christmas Day in their car as they have nowhere else to go.
Andy and Sara Mott are still in a hotel but it shuts over the festive period.
Sara, 49, said: "If we have to stay in the car it will be awful."
Hundreds of others are still without homes after the devastating South Yorkshire floods.
The couple face spending yuletide in their Land Rover because the deluged home they fled will not be habitable again until April, the hotel they have been staying in is shutting and a caravan they hired is not ready to live in.
Andy and Sara are among the 1,200 who were evacuated in and around Doncaster, South Yorks, after being hit by “Biblical” floods on November 8.
Many have been told their homes will not be ready for a year. And locals have urged Boris Johnson to honour an election pledge to help out financially.
Andy, 58, and 49-year-old Sara live in Fishlake, which was left underwater when the River Don burst its banks.
They fear they will be split from their four daughters on Christmas Day, who are staying with relatives. Andy said: “Hopefully we can be in the caravan because the hotel is shut on Christmas Day. If not, we’ll end up in the car as we’ve nowhere else to go.”
Sara added: “We are going through hell. It’s been very traumatic. I just want to get some sort of normality back to life.
“If we have to stay in the car at Christmas, it will be awful.”
The couple hired a caravan but it has no energy supply and does not have a ramp for the wheelchair former landscape gardener Andy uses since he lost a leg in a 1992 motorcycle crash.
Three of their daughters, Stephanie, 29, Eleanor, 23, and 20-year-old Rebecca, are staying with other family members.
But the home of the relatives is not adapted for Andy’s wheelchair.
Rebecca’s twin Emma is staying with her parents at the hotel, which will not be open on Christmas Day. Their rooms there are being paid for by insurance.
Sara said: “Having the family separated was awful and I had to go to the doctor’s because I couldn’t sleep.
"We’d be sat in the hotel really down and the TV news kept showing our house, which hurt us."
Andy’s Nissan Elgrand and £16,000 Harley Davidson tricycle were written off in the floods. The family also lost sentimental items including gowns from all their daughters’ christenings and baby photos.
Sara added: "It’s the sentimental things we can’t get back that hurt the most. It is heartbreaking."
Mark Senglow’s family is another from Fishlake who will not be able to go back to their flood-hit home at Christmas.
The 48-year-old, who has three children aged 12, 14 and 16, told how decorators had just finished work on their bungalow when the deluge struck “fast as a tide”.
He said: “We ended up sofa surfing for a few days and staying with friends ever since.
“We’re going to relatives for three or four days at Christmas.
“We couldn’t find a rental because everyone wanted one and I couldn’t face staying in a hotel. I’d go mad.
"At the moment it doesn’t much feel like Christmas.”
Resident Alexandru Marian, 26, lost his job during the floods as he had to stay at home to look after his five-year-old son because his pregnant
wife Simona Cretu, 28, suffered a kidney infection from the deluge.
The couple are now behind on their rent. Simona said: “My husband just got another job which he started last week.
“But we didn’t have money for rent on December 1.”
Their second child is due on January 18 but the family still have no fridge freezer or carpets.
Many people are afraid to return to Fishlake, fearing a repeat of the flooding.
Local Labour councillor Phil Bedford was at a community meeting in the village this week. He said: “People are talking about counselling because it’s like a kind of post traumatic stress."
Pam Webb, 49, touched the nation when she wept as floods destroyed her Truffle Lodge luxury spa and home in Fishlake.
She discovered her insurance did not cover deluges and now has to work around the clock to get it back open in the New Year.
Pam pleaded with the PM to deliver on the financial pledge he made when he visited.
She said: “Please Mr Johnson will you honour the promise you made to us that no victim of floods either homes or businesses would suffer financial loss.”
Prince Charles will visit Fishlake on Monday to speak to villagers and the emergency services who rescued them.
