Engineer claims the Jet Set explosion was stronger than a 9.7 magnitude earthquake.
SANTO DOMINGO – Preventing structural collapses poses a significant challenge to the Dominican Republic's building system. Several building collapses have occurred in the country in recent years, resulting in approximately 250 deaths.
The latest incident that has generated national mourning was the one that occurred on April 8th at the Jet Set nightclub, with the collapse of the nightclub's roof, which to date has claimed 226 victims, and whose causes are being investigated by the competent authorities.
Other collapses that the media have reported on in the last three years have occurred in La Vega, Santiago de los Caballeros, the National District, La Romana and San Cristóbal, taking hundreds of lives and putting many others at risk, leaving in their wake mourning, pain, orphanhood and countless traumas.
An engineer speaks
According to Teodoro Tejada, former president of the Dominican College of Engineers, Architects and Surveyors (Codia), the causes of these collapses stem from the State's failure to supervise and monitor construction projects, arguing that what happened in Jet Set was greater than a 9.7 magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale.
“Here in the country, more than 80% of the construction projects are illegal, and none of the authorities stop them. In the case of La Romana, there was a lack of oversight of a structure that didn't even meet the most basic construction standards, didn't even meet the most basic regulations, and didn't comply with the requirements,” he stated.
He explained that the municipalities are only concerned with collecting land use fees and don't stop anything. "The state, now with the Ministry of Housing, has made a lot of boasts about training technicians for this, and yet the streets are still full of illegal constructions," he stated.
In La Vega, he said the furniture store had suffered a fire and that the owners had been advised to demolish it. “In the case of Jet Set, it was a death foretold because it had falling debris and was a building that was visible from the side streets, overloaded, with leaks caused by vibrations.”.
The civil engineer indicated that Jet Set lacked a "triangle of life." He described it as a 53-year-old building with Type 3 beams, constructed using an outdated technique. He stated that no adaptations had ever been made and that frames with metal columns or columns of reinforced concrete structural elements should have been installed, supported by reinforced concrete piles combined with profiles to accommodate beams near the roof and elements to mitigate vibrations, which were the primary cause of the collapse.
He argued that the reports provided by the government are never accurate, but rather complacent, because there are businesspeople and officials who must remain untouched. "But I believe we reached a point of collapse. What happened at Jet Set was an explosion greater than a 9.7 magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale; it was an explosion caused by vibrations and excessive loads.".
He opined that the commission to investigate what happened at the nightclub should be a high-level one, where the private sector, Codia and the State are part.
Santiago Wall
In August 2022 , a wall of the dry bridge on Las Carreras Avenue with 30 de Marzo, in Santiago, collapsed after heavy downpours, causing difficulties in vehicular traffic in the area.
The head of operations for the Santiago Fire Department, Alex Torres, explained that the collapse originated because some of the drains near the wall were malfunctioning, causing the structure to accumulate a large amount of water that led to damage.
La Vega
On January 18, 2023, a four-story building housing a furniture store, over 30 years old, collapsed in La Vega with six employees inside. Yasiris Joaquín de Jesús, the mother of a three-month-old baby, died in the collapse.
Although the building was affected by a fire in 2019, no record appeared in the archives of the La Vega city hall indicating that the company Multimuebles requested permission to remodel the collapsed building, according to the Listín Diario publication of that date.
The Director of Urban Planning for the Municipal Council of La Vega, Félix Matías, assured that there is no record in the council's archives of any application for a permit to remodel the infrastructure.
Matías explained that the only registered documentation consists of certifications issued by the La Vega Fire Department and the Central Directorate of Investigations of the National Police (Dicrim), regarding the fire that affected the building in March 2019. “Our files do not contain any request for remodeling of that building,” Félix Matías told the Listín Diario newspaper.
The then president of CODIA, the Dominican College of Engineers, Architects and Surveyors, Cristian Rojas, told El Inmobiliario today that when he visited the site of the events “we could see that the structure was overloaded on the roof, it had a thin layer of about 17 centimeters on top of a weak metal slab and on top of that it had a solar panel system, that is to say, the roof was totally overloaded.
Saint Christopher
In June 2023, a building under construction collapsed in San Cristóbal. According to Cristian Rojas, president of CODIA, the construction company lacked both building permits and blueprints. “The corresponding geotechnical studies were not carried out, which led to the columns sinking due to excessive load. Furthermore, the person in charge did not have the plans or construction permits for the project on site,” explained engineer Rojas.
Elevated February 27
Nine people died when sections of the overpass on Avenida 27 de Febrero collapsed in November 2023 due to heavy rains in the Dominican capital. On November 20, the President of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, declared that the collapse was caused by a design and construction flaw.
After acknowledging that there were 23 years in which no action was taken, 3 of which fall under his administration, Abinader, during the "Weekly with the Press" meeting, announced the creation of a commission, chaired by the geological engineer Osiris de León, to evaluate all the structures and present a report detailing their current conditions.
La Romana
Three people died on February 2nd of this year in this eastern province.
“Elementary failures and deficiencies in construction” were the causes that led to the collapse of the building, whose collapse left three people dead and two injured, according to a preliminary survey carried out by a commission of the CODIA headed by its president Engineers Carlos Mendoza and the geologist, Osiris De León.
During the visit to the site of the tragedy, located on San Miguel Street in the aforementioned sector, the representatives of the Dominican College of Engineers, Architects and Surveyors CODIA and the expert who presides over the Commission for the Supervision of Public Infrastructures in the Face of Climate Change, were able to verify the failures, deficiencies and numerous violations that occurred in the construction.
Santiago Daycare
On April 4, a minor lost her life after a wall collapsed at the Kinderlandia daycare center, located in the El Despertar urbanization in Santiago. "That wall had been there since the school rented it 14 years ago, and yesterday it fell and unfortunately the girl was there," said Dolores Corniel, head of private schools for School District 08-03.
Jet Set
The latest tragedy occurred on April 8th while Ruby Pérez was entertaining at a party in the iconic Jet Set nightclub, when the roof of the nightclub collapsed, causing the death of more than 200 people, becoming one of the worst catastrophes in the country's history.
