On the 17th of February 2018 a Mexican military helicopter crashed landed in the west of Mexico killing 13 people. The helicopter was surveying the previous days earthquake which registered a 7.2 magnitude on the Richter scale.
Thirteen people where killed after a helicopter crash landed into the town of Oaxaca, two government officials were on-board as they assessed the damage from the air caused by a tremor the previous day. They said that the pilot lost control of the aircraft as it landed. The pilot complained of low visibility of the village, as he had circled the town several times raising a mixture of both sand and dust.
It is yet to be revealed whether any of the dead were on-board the helicopter, no one escaped without injury, It remains unknown if all were in-fact residents of the village. Among the thirteen victims of the crash was an infant child.
In Mexico City no-one has been reported to have suffered injury due to the earthquake itself. Mexico is known for its notoriously devastating earthquakes as it lies on 3 majorly active tectonic plates boundaries. The earthquake was felt in the small village although its epicentre in Mexico City is 350 kilometres away from the crash site. Some of the deaths reported had been casualties in the earthquake the previous day, the military helicopter had plummeted to where the casualties where temporarily residing.
Oddly enough the quake took place on the same day as one which was felt on the west coast of the Wales, this having lower [ but unusually high for the UK,} magnitude of 4.4, albeit insignificant and underwhelming in comparison to others worldwide.
What is the Richter scale?
The Richter scale is a way for seismologists to measure how great an earthquake is. The Richter scale as originally devised by Charles Francis Richter, it makes jumps in tens, for instance: an earthquake with a magnitude of 5 will have a force ten times greater than one of 4. The same applies that if a quake with a magnitude of 9 is one hundred times Greater than one with a magnitude of seven.
The fatalities of those in Mexico is a tragic event, but unfortunately they may not be the only lives claimed by both the crash and the quake.
