LINCOLN – Clothes and other items that Jaimi Cole was able to salvage Friday blanketed the small hotel room where she has been staying with her family since the foundation of their home began to crack Tuesday and sink into the ground.

“The only thing keeping the floor up is the fact that the oil tank is being held against the wall,” Jaimi Cole’s mother, Paula Cole, 60, said Friday.

Their one-story yellow house is surrounded by caution tape and appears to slant slightly toward the front from a distance. It’s not until you get up closer that you can see the muddy sinkhole where it’s starting to shift.

“The front stairs are holding on by the bolts,” Jaimi Cole, who works as a secretary, said. “There’s no ground underneath them. It’s a sinkhole.”

Six people, including Cole, her mother, her sister, two nieces, and a special-needs woman for whom the family cares, plus the two family cats, have been staying in two rooms at the Lincoln House Motel since Tuesday courtesy of the American Red Cross. But as of 11 a.m. this morning, they likely will find themselves without a roof over their heads.

The family was having difficulty Friday contacting the Red Cross to see if the organization would pay for additional nights, and they were unsure what they were going to do.

“We want a place to rent,” Jaimi Cole, 33, said. “We’re looking, but with the holidays, there’s nobody around.”

Finding a place with space for six people that will allow the family’s felines, Sammy and Gabby, to stay has been a struggle. In addition, the family doesn’t have the money to pay the first and last month’s rent and a security deposit like many rentals require.

The majority of their savings was spent doing drainage work to the backyard leaching field, making the recent house payment, and doing some minor repairs inside the home.

To make matters worse, the insurance company likely won’t cover the damage to their home on West Broadway.

“They haven’t given us an official statement,” Cole said Friday as she stood among scattered comforters and clothes in the hotel room.

The insurance representative said the problem may have been caused by heavy machinery upsetting the ground when they were doing work in the backyard.

“We don’t have flood insurance,” Paula Cole said.

The insurance adjuster came to see the house on Wednesday and plans to file an official report Monday.

“He said, ‘Right now I can tell you it’s not going to be covered,'” Paula Cole said.

It was around 5:40 p.m. Tuesday when Jaimi Cole said they began hearing creaking and popping sounds. In the basement, she saw that the east side of the cement foundation was heavily cracked, and water was coming in.

When firefighters arrived about 10 minutes later, water had flooded the dirt-floor basement, and the front of the house had sunk as much as 3 feet.

Jaimi Cole was able to enter the house Friday with the fire chief and two other firefighters to retrieve some belongings, but the family isn’t able to move back in until some work is done.

“We went up today and got some stuff out for them,” Engineer Chad Seelye of the Lincoln Fire Department said Friday.

“Eventually they’ll be able to move back in,” he predicted.

The family was busy Friday afternoon sorting and boxing up belongings they wouldn’t need in the next few days.

“Everything’s piled up and we’re trying to find a place for it, but there just isn’t one,” Paula Cole said.

Jaimi Cole rented a storage unit Friday using $30 she said the family doesn’t have right now.

Things have been financially challenging for the family the last couple of months since Paula Cole was diagnosed with diastolic heart failure with pulmonary hypertension.

A main concern after getting the family out of the sinking house was retrieving medicine, but the family jokes because Jaimi Cole also grabbed the Thanksgiving turkey.

“I was just going to give it to somebody so it didn’t go to waste,” Jaimi Cole said.

A friend from their church, however, cooked the family dinner and delivered it Thursday to the hotel.

“No one ate very much at all,” Paula Cole said. “It just wasn’t inside of us to be really joyful.”

The family said they’re happy they all got out and no one was hurt, but they’re not sure what’s next.

They won’t be allowed back in to the house to retrieve the rest of their belongings, such as furniture, dishes and appliances, but said those can be replaced.

“This is the most excitement we’ve had in our whole lives,” Paula Cole said.

“But we didn’t want it to come this way,” her daughter added.

Anyone wanting to help the family can send donations to their church, the Community Evangel Temple, Access Road, Lincoln 04457, or to the Cole family at P.O. Box 835 Lincoln 04457.