The tragedy of the Santo Domingo club: The Balance of the Dead has reached nearly 200 people

The catastrophic collapse of the roof of a popular nightclub in the capital of the Dominican Republic caused the death of at least 184 people, the authorities announced on Wednesday night, while the search for survivors became more and more hopeful, Reuters reports.

The tragedy took place on Tuesday and, for two days, the families of the missing gathered in front of the ruins of the Jet Set club in Santo Domingo, eager to find out about their relatives and transmitting photos to the police.

“We will not abandon anyone,” said Juan Manuel Mendez, the head of the Emergency Operations Center, during a press conference.

The intervention teams will continue to work until the last man is found, but the hopes of finding more survivors under the rubble have decreased, given that no one has been released for more than 24 hours, Mendez added.

“In the following hours there will be a transition from the search and rescue phase to the recovery phase of the inanimate bodies,” said the Presidency spokesman, Homero Figueroa.

The families of the disappears continued to hope. Together with dozens of other people, Alex de Leon was looking for his ex -wife, the mother of their two children and a close friend in the area around the nightclub.

“Unfortunately, I have no information about the place where it is. My 15-year-old son is devastated, and the little one, who is 9 years old, remains calm because I told him that his mother is at work,” he said.

The relatives and friends of the people who are still missing have brought pictures with them and descriptions of the clothes they wore at the time of tragedy, in the hope that they will help to identify their loved ones if they were disfigured.

At the beginning of Wednesday, the authorities reported that 155 people were saved from the rubble and transferred to hospitals. The exact number of people in the club at the time of collapse is still unclear.