Kelvin Espinal spent three days this week at Morgue Santo Domingo.
His cousin, Yadhira Elaine Estévez Serrano, was among 221 people who died when the roof collapsed early Tuesday at the Jet nightclub in the capital of the Dominican Republic. His cousin, who was more like a sister, died the day before his 42nd birthday.
And like dozens of other families, Mr Espinal had not yet received his beloved person for burial.
“We spent all day on Tuesday here, until 12pm,” Mr Espinal said on Thursday afternoon. “We were here all day on Wednesday and today.”
Authorities in the Dominican Republic ended on Thursday, ended the search for bodies trapped in the Jet nightclub, where a roof collapsed during a concert, killing 221 people. An additional 189 people were rescued from the ruins.
The Emergency Business Center handed over the site to the prosecutor’s office to receive the investigation. Now comes the hard part: to calculate what caused the roof of a 50 -year -old former cinematic theater to collapse, as well as hundreds of people had gathered for a concert.
The Roof fell on Jet early Tuesday, a well -known disco at Santo Domingo, whose live music nights on Monday was a tradition of decades of popular with politicians, athletes and the business class. One commander died, like two former Major League baseball players and a family of prominent bankers.
The body of singer Merengue played, Rubby Pérez, was pulled out of debris on Wednesday morning. So many of his fans from his home country, Haina, a city just outside the capital, was at his concert that a collective awakening was held at a local recreation center.
Although officials had repeatedly refused to say how many people were in the club, on Thursday morning they said that everyone had been considered.
“These numbers are sorry for the country,” said Juan Manuel Méndez, director of the Emergency Business Center, in the announcement. “The Dominican family family mourns.”
After several days of repetitive media updates, day and night, Mr Méndez stopped for almost a minute and broke.
“Thank you, my Lord, because today we have completed the most difficult task I had in 20 years led by the Business Center,” he said between tears. “I ask for forgiveness, because every time a person reported a missing family, we are full of weakness knowing that the person was still trapped and we could not reach them.”
Colleagues comforted Mr Méndez and passed the microphone to others to complete the press conference.
Employees offered praise for a timely and exhaustive search.
José Luis Frometa Herasme, who is leading the city’s Fire Service, said some rescue workers were in the area for 53 hours straight.
“I have never seen this all the time I have done different types of rescue,” Mr Frometa said. “Rescuers are pleased with a good job, knowing that we could rescue 189 recorded record time. This is a blessing for our 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 families that the time we were here was spent in the most effective and human way,” Atallah said. “The majority – and I say that from the heart – died immediately.”
But family members said they had met a logjam of people trying to get the victims out of the morgue.
The family of Yeimy Aquino, who had four children, was trying to confirm that her body was in the office of the medical examiner. Her husband, Juan Francisco Peña, described how Ms. Aquino was taking with friends near the stage where Mr. Pérez was performing.
Like the others, he and his family were in the morgue for more than 24 hours.
The Institute of Forensic Pathology, as the cemetery is officially called, said it had received 220 bodies until Thursday morning, of which 146 had been identified. The medical examiners “worked tirelessly” to conduct autopsies and compare biometric data with voters’ rolls, the organization said in a statement.
“We understand the emergency situation and will use the resources necessary to provide a timely answer,” the office said.
Representatives of the club refused to say how many tickets were sold for the concert on Monday night. The nightclub had a capacity of 700 to 1,000 people and was particularly popular on Monday nights.
Mr Méndez said officials had touched the number of tickets sold with the number of people in the morgue and local hospitals.
On Wednesday night, authorities said the rescuers had “exhausted all the reasonable potential” of the alive, and the operation had been officially shifted from searching and rescuing the bodies.
“This hurts so much,” said Méndez.
In a short telephone interview later with the New York Times, Mr Méndez said that no missing people had not been recorded.
“There is no body there,” Méndez said. “We combed the whole area.”
