Hurricane Melissa’s assault on Black River Hospital in St Elizabeth is indelibly planted in Dexter Frue’s mind.

“I went to the bathroom and I looked down to the sea and saw it coming. I had to just run,” Frue told the Jamaica Observer on Thursday.

“It was like a rocket launcher. I heard the glass shattering… I saw… waves taller than the building. Only in a movie do we see those things,” said Frue, who had been recovering from an operation when Melissa hit on Tuesday.

The patient also described the scenes inside the hospital as the Category 5 storm lashed the building.

“Everybody was screaming, even the nurses; nurse scream, man… the amount of prayer, man, I feel that’s what saved some of us,” Frue told the Observer.

He added that the nurses put aside their own fear, rallied around them and cheered them up despite flooding that pushed water almost onto their beds.

Frue was discharged on Tuesday but up to late Thursday evening had been unable to leave the hospital.

“I can’t get to anyone in my family. I tried until my phone battery died. But I’m still here hoping one of them will come,” he said.

An emergency medical doctor at the hospital pleaded for food and water.

“Send a truck, send anything, send your solar fridge so we can store medication and supplies, send water, send food, send anything,” he said.

The hospital suffered significant structural damage, with the roof caving in and the facility losing power.

“As you can see here, it’s total devastation. We are evacuating as many of the patients as we can get out,” the doctor said.

After the catastrophic damage on Tuesday, doctors, nurses, and patients had to wait until Thursday afternoon when a caravan of nine ambulances, escorted by personnel from the Jamaica Defence Force Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) team arrived after making it through many roadblocks.

A volunteer in that party revealed that it took a makeshift team of ambulance drivers, surgeons and soldiers spending more than 24 hours working non-stop to chop their way forward to Black River.

Following the evacuation, the doctor explained to the Observer that going forward the facility will operate as a field hospital, taking only emergency cases.

“Essentially it’s only the bare minimum we have and we can only take whatever comes in as emergencies,” the doctor said.

“If you have your backhoe, your tractor, come and help us clear some of the debris… we don’t even have AC (air-conditioning) to keep the wards cool… not even a generator to work at night, so please send anything,” he pleaded.

Following the evacuations at least one ambulance faced difficulty in flood waters on the way out of St Elizabeth and had to be pushed out of the water.

The seaside hospital is located in what Prime Minister Andrew Holness described as ground zero, the point where Hurricane Melissa made landfall.

A patient looks out of a window at Black River Hospital on Thursday as evacuations were underway following Tuesday’s passage of Hurricane Melissa. (Photos: Garfield Robinson)

Patients being evacuated from Black River Hospital on Thursday following the passage of Hurricane Melissa on Tuesday.