The death toll after a roof collapsed at a crowded nightclub in the Dominican Republic has climbed to 218, the head of rescue operations said Thursday, in the Caribbean nation’s worst disaster in decades.
Rescuers had worked frantically since the collapse in the early hours of Tuesday to dig out survivors from the rubble of the popular Jet Set club in Santo Domingo.
Among the dead were famed merengue singer Rubby Perez, who was performing on stage as the roof caved in, as well as two former Major League Baseball players and a local politician.
“Unfortunately and with regret, (there are) 218 people dead as preliminary data,” Juan Manuel Mendez, director of the Emergency Operations Center (COE), told reporters.
He said that 189 people had been “rescued alive” since the collapse.
More than 500 people were injured in the incident. Up to 1,000 people could have been inside the club at the time of the accident, local media has reported, though no official figure has yet been given.
“Our rescue workers are already concluding the search,” Mendez said.
“We are saddened by this tragedy that has so saddened the Dominican people.”
Authorities ruled out the possibility of finding any more survivors late Wednesday.
The government said it will open an inquiry into the disaster as soon as the rescue operations have been completed.
Over 300 rescue workers, aided by sniffer dogs, had spent two days combing through mounds of fallen bricks, steel bars and tin sheets, supported by firefighters from Puerto Rico and Israel.
Aerial images of the site showed a scene resembling the aftermath of an earthquake, with a gaping hole where the roof of the club — a fixture of Santo Domingo’s nightlife for half a century — had been.
A video posted on social media showed the venue suddenly plunged into darkness while Perez was singing.
Tributes to the singer, known for hits such as “Volvere” and “Enamorado de Ella,” poured in from across Latin America.
The baseball world meanwhile mourned the death of Octavio Dotel, a 51-year-old baseball pitcher who won the World Series with the St Louis Cardinals in 2011, and Tony Blanco, 45, who also played in the United States.
President Luis Abinader declared three days of national mourning.
Relatives were still waiting desperately for news Wednesday of their loved ones outside the ruined club, at hospitals and at the local morgue.
Antonio Hernandez, whose son worked at the Jet Set nightclub, told AFP Wednesday his hopes of finding his son alive had begun fading as he watched more and more bodies, but no survivors, being retrieved.
The remains in one body bag resembled his son’s height and build, said Hernandez, but he did not investigate. “I don’t have the stomach to find out the worst yet.”
