Unbearable waiting for relatives in the Dominican Republic's Dominican Night Club crash

Maximo Penja has been coming to Jet Set nightclub every Monday for the last 30 years.

This week, excited to see a concert by the popular Dominican singer Ruby Perez, he took his wife and sister. Now all three are buried under the ruins of the collapsed disco, after the roof is partly through the performance, leaving at least 184 dead.

“I have not heard any news about any of them,” says Shayelin Penya, Maximo's 17-year-old daughter while sitting on a wall outside the devastated place.

“It was just another Monday night for them. In fact, my father invited my mother to come, but at the last moment she decided not to walk. It was a blessing concealed.”

Behind her, as she speaks, a team of rescue workers thoroughly passes through the ruins inside the building, listening to the smallest sound of survivors under them. They are joined by Israeli and Mexican search teams and use complex heat search equipment to try to find anyone who is still alive.

Shaylin tells me that her cousin is one of the rescue workers, sifting the debris for her own uncle, who brings her peace of mind, that a relative is inside, she does her best to try to follow him.

But uncertainty and endless wait for information become unbearable, says Shaylin.

“I feel the desire to just go in there and repel all the rocks and take it out. But as much as I want, I really can't. I just have to sit here and wait for it.”

Authorities, for their part, are doing their best to inform the public by providing grim updates on the number of dead, which is constantly increasing with each passing hour. At regular intervals of the site, a team that carries a body covered by a blanket to a stretcher.

Sometimes, though more often now, someone is brought alive, intensifying the hopes of relatives. Emergency services insist that survivors can still be reached in debris.

“Nothing can be ruled out,” said Emergency Operations Center Juan Manuel Mendes. “Here we will go through every inch of the ruins to give the families of those who have caught the disaster some closure.”

The President of the Dominican Republic Louis Abbander has announced three days of national mourning, a reflection of the scale of the tragedy that is developing on the site.

Among those who were confirmed that they had lost their lives in the accident were some famous national figures, including Perez himself, two very beloved former baseball players, Octavio Dotel and Tony Blanco and a regional governor. And with them, many lovers of Merengue music and Perez fans also died in the collapse.

As long as there is a chance of success, the authorities' focus remains on the search and rescue operation. In the end, however, the questions will turn to the cause of the collapse and government investigators will have to give meaningful answers to families in a timely manner.

A theory is already spreading out of place. Many direct the finger of the blame for a fire at the nightclub about two years ago. Some are afraid that the explosion structurally weakens the site or that all repairs are not or are not in line with the code.

The owner of the Jet Set nightclub, Antonio Espailat, delivered a video message via social media, expressing his condolences and those of the “whole family of jet, of the relatives of the victims.

He also insisted that he and his team cooperate “completely and transparently with the authorities” over the disaster.

Shaylin Penya has heard of fire at the nightclub and is one of those who think he has played a role. So far, however, she has more concern. Despite the family's efforts to protect them, her younger sisters realized that their father and mother were trapped under the ruins of other children at school.

They are “horrified,” she added.

Shaylin's birthday is on Thursday, a day that she usually celebrates with her father, stepmother and her aunt.

Instead, she should endure him in the most possible circumstances, in anticipation of the news of her missing loved ones, caught in the oldest such tragedy in the modern history of her country.