Frustrated families await news days after 221 killed in Dominican club disaster
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (AFP)—Frustration grew Friday in the Dominican Republic as families of some of the 221 people killed in a nightclub roof collapse three days earlier waited for their loved ones’ bodies to be identified.
Dozens of desperate relatives waited in tents at the forensic morgue in Santo Domingo, the capital city where the Jet Set club’s roof caved in on hundreds of people gathered to see merengue singer Rubby Perez in the early hours of Tuesday.
Perez was on stage when disaster struck, and the 69-year-old was given a sendoff Thursday at the National Theater attended by President Luis Abinader and the singer’s daughter Zulinka, who had escaped the calamity alive.
Many other families, though, still await closure before they can start the grieving process following the Caribbean nation’s worst tragedy in decades.
“It is distressing, it is something you cannot imagine… the wait for the bodies is exasperating,” cried Yuni Garcia, who lost her brother, a club security guard, but has yet to recover his corpse.
The office of president Abinader on Friday put the final death toll at 221, with 189 people pulled alive from the rubble of the popular nightclub now reduced to mounds of twisted steel, zinc and brick.
Aerial images of the site showed a scene resembling the aftermath of an earthquake, with a gaping hole where the club’s roof had been.
A video posted on social media showed the venue, which could hold 1,700 guests, suddenly plunged into darkness while Perez was singing, followed by crashing sounds and screams.