As Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa moves in­to the At­lantic and be­gins to weak­en, res­i­dents of Ja­maica are strug­gling to com­pre­hend the ex­tent of the death and de­struc­tion she has caused.

For Ja­maican na­tion­al Leon Crooks, the pas­sage of the hur­ri­cane will for­ev­er be etched in his mem­o­ry, a night of ter­ror, chaos, and sur­vival.

“It was a night­mare ex­pe­ri­ence, the winds sound­ed like wail­ing, the win­dows and doors, it did not mat­ter if you bat­tened them up, any lit­tle space and wa­ter came in, you re­al­ly could not imag­ine it,” Crooks re­called yes­ter­day.