Frustrated families await news days after Dominican club disaster
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.
Dozens of 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.
Officials on Thursday put the toll at 221, but said there could be more bodies under 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 suddenly plunged into darkness while Perez was singing, followed by crashing sounds and screams.
'Days of uncertainty'
Local media reported that between 500 and 1,000 people had attended the show, though no official crowd count has been given. The club could hold 1,700 guests.
Waiting at the morgue was Esperanza Dominguez, who told AFP she had yet to find her missing relative's face in photos of the dead being circulated by forensic teams working to identify the victims.
"I am worn out, I am going crazy because... of the many things I have seen," she said.
Fany Martinez, 46, waited for news on her sister who lived in Spain and was in Santo Domingo on a visit.
"We have been waiting for many days, many days of uncertainty... It has been very hard, it has been very difficult for us," she said.
Six tents were set up at the morgue to accomodate waiting relatives and provide psychological assistance.
But the extent of the tragedy has outstripped capacity.
Health Minister Victor Atallah said Thursday that "no pathology institute has the capacity to handle so many bodies so quickly."
He had vowed, however, that "no one will be left unidentified... We are going to move every last stone that needs to be moved."
Authorities said that by Thursday afternoon, 123 autopsies had been completed, and a large screen outside the forensic morgue listed the names of confirmed victims.
Twelve extra forensic pathologists were brought on board to aid in the process, according to the health ministry.
The mayor's office had provided six funeral homes with 170 coffins free of charge.
The government has extended an initial three-day national mourning period for another three days to Sunday, and announced the creation of a special commission of national and foreign experts to determine the cause of the disaster.
Hundreds of rescuers, aided by sniffer dogs, have worked tirelessly since the disaster to pull survivors from the rubble, but called off the search for live victims late Wednesday and shifted their focus to recovering the dead.
A collective funeral ceremony was held Thursday in the community of Haina that neighbors Santo Domingo, for about two dozen victims.
A provisional list of the deceased included a Haitian, an Italian, two French citizens and an American.