"Screeching," he said today. "That screeching noise of it getting ripped out of the wood, just high pitched, metal and wood getting ripped apart."

Then he heard a boom.

"It sounded like thunder coming through my roof," he said.

The two-bedroom home Colbert rented with his longtime girlfriend and two sons appears to have suffered the most serious damage from Wednesday’s wild windstorm, according to the Hawai'i chapter of the American Red Cross, which surveyed damage statewide.

Half of the wood and metal roof landed on the neighbor’s home, 30 feet away, Colbert said. And pieces of torn metal had sailed 100 feet down the street.

The living room and master bedroom were exposed, with nothing but a thin canec wallboard ceiling between him and the sky.

That’s when things got worse.

"The front half of the roof was totally wiped clean off the house," he said. "And maybe about 10 minutes later, it started thunderstorming and then I had about three inches of rain in my house."

Colbert quickly drove to Kane'ohe and rented a moving van. When he got home, he and his girlfriend began grabbing anything of value — anything that wasn’t so completely soaked it couldn’t be saved.

He estimates he lost $4,000 to $5,000 worth of possessions. He has no renter’s insurance.

"It has been a catastrophe," said the 28-year-old Colbert. "I lost couches, my bed, a couple of wood objects. We lost a lot of things. Carpet. Ceiling fans."

But it’s actually worse than that.

Rats had lived between canec and the roof and the stench of their rain-soaked waste now permeates everything still in the home, Colbert said.

"Everything smells horrendous," he said. "You almost want to barf."