SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — Two former Major League Baseball stars. An iconic singer. A renowned fashion designer. A prominent banking family. A governor. Young professionals.
They were among the at least 221 people who were killed Tuesday when what had started as a celebratory night turned into one of the Dominican Republic’s deadliest events. The roof of the bustling Jet Set nightclub collapsed, plunging an entire nation into mourning.
In this Caribbean capital, the deaths felt personal to so many, with local journalists breaking down as they recounted what was taking place and residents trying to come to terms with how it could have happened — and taken the lives of so many, including prominent Dominicans.
The death toll is likely to reach even higher as countless others remained missing Wednesday, with search crews continuing to sort through the rubble and forensic specialists trying to identify victims.
“We’ve never seen an event like this,” Carolina Lorenzo, a Dominican journalist covering the tragedy, said in Spanish. “To see so many dead people pulled out and the families waiting for information, it’s desperate.”
Hundreds had gone to the nightclub to enjoy a performance by the renowned merengue singer Rubby Pérez. He was among those killed — expanding a nation’s collective grief beyond the island’s borders.
Lorenzo said Pérez sang at her wedding. Now, she was at the site of the collapse reporting on his death and the deaths of other well-known Dominicans, including former MLB players Octavio Dotel and Tony Blanco.
Lorenzo described Pérez as the best merengue musician in the Dominican Republic. Her sons, who collect baseball cards, are sad about the deaths of two of their MLB idols, she told NBC News.
Amid the grief, there are many questions and a sense of disbelief at the enormity of the tragedy.
‘Still don’t know anything’
Wilson Casado had been waiting all night outside the destroyed club for news about three of his missing loved ones: his cousin, his nephew and his nephew’s pregnant wife.
Casado had last seen them over the weekend when his cousin arrived from North Carolina just to see Pérez in concert. Casado said the three of them were posting videos of the event on social media.
With his nephew’s car still parked outside the club, Casado said, the family has checked all the hospitals in the area and still “don’t know anything about where they could be yet. We just hope they’re at a hospital to be able to see them again.”
Hundreds of people were gathering outside the country’s institute of pathology, showing up with photos of their missing loved ones to see whether they are among the dead victims who have been identified.
As more bodies were being recovered from the rubble, officials were coming out to address the distressed families, shouting the names of newly identified victims. Cries and screams would erupt from heartbroken relatives.
Luis Alberto Martínez was there waiting to hear news about his sister and niece, convinced that he had probably “already lost them.”
“It has been an extremely terrible process, extremely chaotic,” Martínez told Noticias Telemundo. “We have suffered greatly. It is painful. I have no words.”
'Died doing what he liked most'
Known for saying that “merengue is the DNA of the homeland,” Pérez “wasn’t just any singer,” his brother, Rubby Micaís Pérez Díaz, told Noticias Telemundo. “He knew how to transcend music.”
Pérez is being revered for preserving the tropical music genre that originated in the Dominican Republic; merengue is considered by many a pillar of Dominican cultural identity.
Even though “what we are experiencing in Santo Domingo is very painful,” Pérez Díaz said, his brother sang until his last breath and “died doing what he liked most.”
Major League Baseball paid tribute to Dotel and Blanco on social media and in U.S. baseball stadiums. It expressed its condolences to longtime MLB slugger Nelson Cruz, who lost his sister Gov. Nelsy Cruz in the disaster.
Dozens of people showed up at the governor's office in Montecristi province as they waited for Cruz's remains Tuesday evening ahead of a funeral ceremony in her honor, local media reported.
Nelson Cruz said in a statement that his sister's "legacy of service and love will live forever in our hearts."
Other high-profile people who died include Dominican fashion designer Martín Polanco and family members of Grupo Popular, one of the country's largest banking companies. The company announced the deaths of Eduardo Grullón, president of its AFP Popular branch; his wife, Jhoanna Rodríguez de Grullón; and Alexandra Grullón, his sister.
The company also announced the deaths of Alexandra Grullón's husband, Eduardo Guarionex Estrella Cruz, who is also the son of the country’s minister of public works; and a bank employee, Stephanie Avendaño Patricio.
"We join in the national mourning and the feelings of all Dominican society in this moment," Grupo Popular said in a statement.
The tragedy reverberated beyond the country’s borders, as news came out that Dominicans living abroad were among those who had died.
In New York, the city with the largest Dominican population in the United States, hundreds of people gathered in Washington Square Park to mourn the lives lost. And in Lawrence, Massachusetts, community members gathered outside the restaurant of a Dominican business owner, Fray Luis Rosario, who was killed.
“I don’t remember something like that happening in the history of the country,” Santiago Matías, a relative of Rosario’s, told NBC Boston.
Rescue efforts will remain a priority, authorities said, and the cause of the collapse remains unknown.
Nicole Acevedo reported from New York and Erin McLaughlin and Carolina Gonzalez from Santo Domingo.
