At least nine people died when a concrete wall collapsed in one of the tunnels in a busy avenue in Santo Domingo on Saturday, as a result of heavy rains and floods caused by the passage of a tropical disturbance that has been battering the west of the Caribbean.
The wall, which is part of the infrastructure built to speed up traffic in the National District, collapsed late Saturday afternoon when there were still many cars circulating despite of the alerts issued by emergency agencies.
Damaged pipes poured water into the tunnel, making rescue more difficult.
“We recovered about nine bodies in that area,” Delfin Rodriguez, Deputy Director of Civil Defense Operations, told The Associated Press.
Of these, five were male and four were female.
The concrete wall crushed several of the vehicles circulating at the time in the centre of the Dominican Republic’s capital, while floods swept away vehicles and drowned houses and people in the western part of the city.
