Search ends for victims in Dominican Republic collapse that killed 221

Although officials in the Dominican Republic had repeatedly declined to say how many people were inside the club, on Thursday they said that with 221 fatalities and 189 people rescued, everyone had been accounted for. (Facebook via Cuerpo de Bomberos de PR)

By Hogla Enecia Pérez and Frances Robles

Kelvin Espinal spent three days this week at the Santo Domingo morgue.

His cousin, Yadhira Elaine Estévez Serrano, was among 221 people who died when the roof collapsed early Tuesday at Jet Set nightclub in the capital of the Dominican Republic. His cousin, who was more like a sister, died the day before her 42nd birthday.

And like dozens of other families, Espinal had yet to receive his loved one’s body for burial.

“We spent all day Tuesday here, until 12 at night,” Espinal said Thursday afternoon. “We were here all day Wednesday and today.”

The authorities in the Dominican Republic on Thursday ended the search for bodies trapped in the nightclub, where a roof collapsed during a concert, killing 221 people and injuring 189 more.

The Emergency Operations Center handed the site over to the prosecutor’s office to pick up the investigation. Now comes the hard part: figuring out what caused the roof of a 50-year-old former movie theater to come crashing down, just as hundreds of people had gathered for a concert.

The roof caved in early Tuesday at Jet Set, a well-known disco in Santo Domingo, whose Monday live music nights were a decades-old tradition popular with politicians, athletes and the business class. A governor died, as did two former Major League Baseball players and a family of prominent bankers.

The body of the merengue singer who was performing, Rubby Pérez, was pulled out of the wreckage Wednesday morning. So many of his fans from his hometown, Haina, a city just outside the capital, were at his concert that a collective wake was held at a local recreation center.

Although officials had repeatedly declined to say how many people were inside the club, on Thursday morning they said everyone had been accounted for.

“These numbers sadden the country,” Juan Manuel Méndez, the director of the emergency operations center, said in making the announcement. “The Dominican family mourns.”

After several days of repeated media briefings, day and night, Méndez paused for nearly a minute and broke down sobbing.

“Thank you, my Lord, because today we concluded the most difficult task that I have had in 20 years heading the operations center,” he said between tears. “I ask forgiveness, because every time a person reported a missing family member, we were filled with helplessness knowing that the person was still trapped, and we hadn’t been able to reach them.”

Colleagues consoled Méndez, and he passed the microphone to others to finish the news conference.

Officials offered praise for a timely and exhaustive search.

José Luis Frometa Herasme, who leads the city’s fire department, said some rescue workers had been at the site for 53 hours straight.

“I have never seen anything like that in all the time I have been doing different types of rescues,” Frometa said. “Rescuers have the satisfaction of a job well done, knowing that we were able to rescue 189 injured people in record time. That’s a blessing for us rescuers.”

Víctor E. Atallah, the minister of health, assured families that their relatives had not suffered.

“I want to reiterate that for the well-being of the families that the time we were here was spent in the most effective and humane way possible,” Atallah said. “The majority — and I say this from the heart — died instantly.”

But family members said they had encountered a logjam of people trying to get victims out of the morgue.

The family of Yeimy Aquino, who had four children, was trying to confirm that her body was at the medical examiner’s office. Her husband, Juan Francisco Peña, described how Aquino was hanging out with friends near the stage where Pérez was performing.

Like the others, he and his family had been at the morgue for more than 24 hours.

The Institute of Forensic Pathology, as the morgue is officially called, said it had received 220 bodies by Thursday morning, of which 146 had been identified. Medical examiners were “working tirelessly” to conduct autopsies and compare biometric data against voter rolls, the agency said in a statement.

“We understand the emergency and will use the necessary resources to provide a timely response,” the office said.

Representatives of the club have declined to say how many tickets were sold for the concert Monday night. The nightclub had a capacity of 700 to 1,000 people and was particularly popular on Monday nights.

Méndez had said officials had triangulated the number of tickets sold with the number of people at the morgue and in local hospitals.

On Wednesday night, authorities said rescuers had “exhausted all reasonable possibilities” of finding anyone alive, and the operation had officially shifted from search and rescue to the recovery of bodies.

“This hurts so much,” Méndez said.

In a brief telephone interview afterward with The New York Times, Méndez said no missing people were unaccounted for.

“Not a single body remains there,” Méndez said. “We combed the entire area.”