Unbearable wait for relatives in nightclub disaster 9 minutes ago Share Save Will Grant Mexico, Central America and Cuba Correspondent Reporting from Santo Domingo Share Save Getty Images Maximo Peña had been coming to the Jet Set nightclub every single Monday for the past 30 years. This week, excited to see a concert by the popular Dominican singer Rubby Pérez, he took his wife and his sister. Now all three are buried beneath the rubble of the collapsed discotheque, after the roof caved in part way through the performance, leaving at least 184 dead. "I haven't heard any news about any of them," says Shailyn Peña, Maximo's 17-year-old daughter as she sits on a wall outside the devastated venue. "It was just another Monday night for them. In fact, my dad invited my mum to come too but at the last minute she decided not to go. It was a blessing in disguise." Shailyn Peña is among those waiting for news about their missing loved ones Behind her as she speaks, a team of rescue workers is meticulously going through the rubble inside the building, listening for the slightest sound of a survivor beneath them. They have been joined by Israeli and Mexican search teams and are using sophisticated heat-seeking equipment to try to locate anyone still alive. Shailyn tells me her cousin is one of the rescue workers, sifting through the debris for her own uncle, which brings her peace of mind that a relative is inside, doing everything in her power to try to track him down. But the uncertainty and the endless wait for information are becoming unbearable, Shailyn says. "I feel the urge to just go in there and push aside all the rocks and pull him out. But as much as I want to, I really can't. I just have to sit here and wait it out." Shailyn Peña Shailyn Peña pictured with her father Maximo For their part, the authorities are doing what they can to keep the public informed, delivering grim updates on the number of dead, which has risen steadily with every passing hour. At regular intervals, a team emerges from the site carrying a body covered by a blanket on a stretcher. Occasionally, although more rarely now, someone is brought out alive, bolstering the hopes of the relatives. The emergency services insist survivors can still be reached in the debris. "Nothing can be ruled out," said the Director of the Emergency Operations Centre, Juan Manuel Mendez. "We are going to go over every inch of the rubble here to give the families of those caught up in the disaster some kind of closure." The President of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, declared three days of national mourning, a reflection of the scale of the tragedy unfolding at the site. Among those confirmed to have lost their lives in the accident were some well-known national figures including Pérez himself, two much-loved former baseball players, Octavio Dotel and Tony Blanco, and a regional governor. And alongside them, scores of merengue music-lovers and Pérez fans also died in the collapse. Getty Images More than 300 rescue workers have spent two days combing through the rubble looking for survivors