An unbearable expectation of relatives in the Dominican Night Club

Maxim Penya came to the Jet Set night club every Monday in 30 years.

This week, when he saw the concert of the popular Dominican singer Ruby Perez, he took his wife and sister. Now all three are buried under the rubble of the destroyed disco, after the roof went partly through the performance, leaving at least 184 dead.

“I haven’t heard any news about anything,” says Shailin Penya, 17-year-old daughter Maxim when she was sitting on a wall near a devastated place.

“It was another Monday night for them. In fact, my dad invited my mom to come, but at the last minute she decided not to go. It was a disguise.”

Behind her, as she says, the rescuers’ team is carefully passing through the rubble inside the building, listening to the smallest sound that survived under them. They were joined by Israeli and Mexican search groups and use sophisticated heat search equipment to try to find those who are still alive.

Shailin tells me that her cousin is one of the rescue workers, sifting the garbage for her own uncle, who brings her peace that the relative is inside, doing everything that depends on her.

But the uncertainty and endless expectation of information becomes unbearable, says Shalin.

“I feel the desire to just go there and push off all the rocks and pull it out. But as much as I want, I really can’t. I just need to sit here and wait.”

For their part, the authorities are doing their best to report the public, presenting gloomy updates on the number of dead, which is constantly raising with every hour. In the usual intervals, the team leaves the area that carries the body covered with a blanket on the stretcher.

Sometimes, though rarely now, someone is brought alive, strengthening the hopes of relatives. The emergency services insist that the survivors can still be achieved in the garbage.

“Nothing cannot be ruled out,” said the director of the ambulance center Juan Manuel Mendes. “We are going to go to every centimeter of rubble to give the families those who hit the catastrophe.”

President of the Dominican Republic Luis Abinadad announced three days of national mourning, a reflection of the scale of the tragedy, which unfolds in this place.

Among those who confirmed that they lost their lives in the crash, there were some famous national figures, including Perez himself, two very favorite former basebuilders, Octavio Dotel and Tony Blanca, and the regional governor. And next to them, dozens of music lovers and Perez fans also died in collapse.

As long as there is a possible chance of success, the orientation of the authorities remains in the search and rescue operation. However, in the end the questions will be transferred to the cause of the collapse, and government investigators will have to give significant answers to the families at one time.

One theory is already circulating at the venue. Many show the finger of guilt at a fire at a nightclub about two years ago. Some fear that Blaze structurally weakened the site or that any repairs to be insufficient or not to the code.

The owner of the Jet Set Antonio Espaillat nightclub handed over the video through social media, expressing his condolences and “the whole family family”, relatives of the victims.

He also insisted that he and his team completely and transparently cooperated with the authorities over the catastrophe.

Shailin Penya heard about the fire in the nightclub and is one of those who think it played a role. However, she has great worries. Despite the efforts of the family to protect them, her younger stepchildren found out that their father and mother were trapped under the constipation of other children at school.

They were “horrified”, she added.

On Thursday, Shalin’s birthday, a day when she usually celebrates her father, stepmother and aunt.

Instead, she must survive this in the worst possible circumstances, waiting for the news of her missing lovers, who got into the worst such tragedy in the modern history of her country.