FOR Junior Bowen, the nightmare of Hurricane Melissa was far more than the howling of 185-mile-per-hour winds. It was the horrifying moment when his house lifted off the ground, with him still inside, before he was hurled into nearby bushes.

The 59-year-old resident of Carawina Road, Petersfield in Westmoreland, recounted the near-death experience as the Category Five hurricane tore through his home last Tuesday afternoon, leaving him battered, buried, and helpless beneath the rubble until he was rescued.

“I went outside, and memba seh mi have some car papers put down inside [the house], and I just turn back to go pick them up, and by the time I go in there and pick dem up, mi feel mi house just lift up in the air with mi and carry mi [gone],” Bowen told the Jamaica Observer.

“And mi just drop out of the house and don’t even know if it’s the door, the bottom, mi just know seh it come down pon mi head,” he recalled.

An injured Bowen was later found beneath debris, drenched from hours of rainfall. He was assisted to a nearby home and attended to by a nurse until he was taken to Savanna-la-Mar Hospital last Thursday where doctors treated deep cuts to his head and fingers. He now wears a neck brace and is on medication.

“Mi get about four chop inna mi head; mi get dem stitch up yesterday. One zinc chop up my finger here; I get it stitched up, come in like all my pressure high pon mi,” he said.

Bowen described spending hours lying in the open, completely exposed to the elements after his home collapsed around him.

“No one never know seh mi was over there, so mi just inna the storm lie down…The rain just a wet me, just a wet me, just a wet me; mi just have to beg Fada God to give mi the health and strength,” the 59-year-old shared with the Sunday Observer.

He said it wasn’t until the storm calmed that a young man noticed him and called out.

“Is when the rain ease up mi see the likkle young man a seh, ‘Uncle, uncle, a over here suh you fi come.’ ”

Now recovering but displaced, Bowen has lost everything he owned and is pleading for help.

“Whatever assistance mi can get cause mi nuh have nothing. Not even clothes mi nuh have right now to tell you the God truth. Everything gone. I don’t even know which part the house deh; I don’t even know where it reach, because all the storm mi lie down inna the rain out there and a wonder weh mi deh,” he said.