Home is a caravan for forgotten flood victims

The Preece family should have been opening their presents under the tree and sitting down to turkey and all the trimmings yesterday, celebrating Christmas in their own home.

But Sam and Steve, and their children, Jasmine, 10, and Ryan, seven, don't have a Christmas tree. They don't have a living room. This festival season, they don't even have a home.

They are one of thousands of families still not back in their houses after the devastating floods that submerged Hull and neighbouring East Riding exactly six months ago yesterday. A few, among thousands of forgotten flood victims, who woke up on Christmas day in a tiny, cramped, caravan perched on their driveway.

"It doesn't feel like Christmas," said Sam Preece. "To be honest this is the first year I can remember that I didn't want Christmas to arrive. I've buried my head in the sand and hoped that if I didn't think about it, it wouldn't come.

"We haven't been able to put decorations or a tree up. Usually our house would be full of lights and decoration and we'd have a great home-cooked dinner. This year we had to go to the pub."

"The children are the same. Just before Christmas they said to me 'it's not Christmas'. They knew that Santa Claus wasn't going to come through the sky light in the caravan," said Steve Preece.

"It upsets us terribly to know that we couldn't give our children the Christmas they wanted and the Christmas they should have had."

It's half a year since the reporters and television crews packed away their cameras and microphones and left the Yorkshire towns which had been engulfed by cold, filthy floodwater. But to those still here, an end to the nightmare still seems far off.

"I reckon it will be April or May at least before we are back in," said Mr Preece. "It could even be June. That would be a year. If someone told me we'd be out of the house for a year, I wouldn't have believed them.

"Living in the caravan was a bit of a novelty for the kids at first, now we are bored of it. We just want our home back."

It is a similar scene in East Riding, slightly north of Hull. Here, rubbish skips litter every street; almost every driveway is adorned by a caravan.

One, on Seaton Road, stands out from the rest. Steve and Nicola Carrick's temporary home is covered in Christmas decorations, from fairly lights to a luminous snowman.

The couple have been living in the caravan since August with their children Serena, six, and Rhyce, five. But, despite the somewhat unusual living arrangements, the pair were determined not to let it ruin their Christmas.

"It would take a lot more than a little bit of water to ruin our Christmas," said Nicola. "We weren't going to cancel our Christmas, not for anyone."

The family headed to Nicola's mother's for Christmas dinner. "It was a bit different, but we made it work," Nicola said. "It was a distraction from the hell of the past few months."

The couple admit the past six months have been harder than they could have imagined. Steve, 40, said: "It's the lack of space that has been hard. Usually we have our own rooms and we can do our own thing. Here we are on top of each other and are sleeping yards away from each other.

"I suppose it has brought us closer though. And it has definitely brought out the community spirit in the street.

"We all help each other and have a laugh and a joke about our situation because you have to. If you don't laugh about it you'll go mad."

A few doors along from the Carricks are Melvyn and Lesley Taylor for whom home for the past five months has been a tiny 8ft x 8ft caravan on their driveway. They spent Christmas with family in the Lake District, but today they are back "home".

"We didn't even think about Christmas. Usually we'd have a tree up and our cards on display, but we haven't been in the mood this year," Melvyn shrugged. "And in any case, we've nowhere to put them."

"I have my good days and bad days," sighed Lesley. "It has upset me a lot and, as it got closer to Christmas, it was worse because it's normally a happy time. It didn't feel like that in this caravan."

"But at least it's nearly over. We've been told we should be in by February," she said.