Accident kills 13 earthquake survivors
Mexican government helicopter crashes during night landing
A government helicopter, carrying officials surveying damage from an earthquake, crashed in southern Mexico on Friday evening, killing at least 13 men, women and children.
The accident horrified and angered people in Mexico, which had seemed to escape the worst after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit the state of Oaxaca earlier in the day. Unlike last year’s deadly quake near Mexico City, this temblor caused little more than power outages and structural damage in the town of Santiago Jamiltepec, near the southern coast.
The governor of Oaxaca and Mexico’s new interior secretary had been assessing the damage from the air. The crash occurred as the helicopter was preparing to land in a field in the town after dark.
A state government official who was not authorized to be quoted by name said the chopper crashed into a group of people who had been spending the night outside because aftershocks, including one of 5.8 magnitude that struck about an hour after the first, had caused people to flee their homes for fear they would collapse.
The Oaxaca state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that five women, four men and three children were killed at the crash site and another person died later at a hospital.
The Defense Department said the Blackhawk helicopter crashed as it was preparing to land in a vacant lot. The department said the victims had been waiting for the helicopter, but did not provide more details.
No one aboard the helicopter, including Interior Secretary Alfonso Navarrete and Oaxaca Gov. Alejandro Murat, was seriously hurt. Lost control at landing zone
Jorge Morales, a local reporter who was aboard the helicopter when it crashed Friday night, described harrowing moments as the pilot lost control and the helicopter attempted to touch down in a swirl of dust in Jamiltepec, a city in Oaxaca state close to the epicenter of the earthquake that struck earlier Friday.
“The moment the helicopter touched down it lost control, it slid — like it skidded — and it hit some vehicles that were parked alongside the area that had been defined for the landing,” Morales told a Mexican television news program. “In that moment, you couldn’t see anything, nothing else was heard beside the sound that iron makes when it scrapes the earth.”
Navarrete and the defense department said they regretted the loss of life.
The Blackhawk ended up on its side, plastic chairs strewn around the field and two vans crushed beneath thousands of pounds of machinery.
The mayor of Jamiltepec, Efrain de la Cruz, was on the phone with CNN when he got word of the crash. The network had been showing clips of the city from earlier in the day. A couple kissed in the street, shaken but okay.
Then the mayor’s anguished voice, crying in Spanish over the footage: “A helicopter is down! A helicopter is down! … This can’t be possible, oh my God.” ‘Act of stupidity’
The government now faces angry questions about why such a landing was even attempted in the dark. For example, Layda Sansores, a senator for a different Mexican state, called the flight an unforgivable “act of stupidity.”
The quake damaged about 50 homes in Jamiltepec, as well as the town hall and church, according to the Interior Department. It also rocked buildings in Mexico City, about 240 miles northwest, and many other parts of the country.
But the damage was minimal compared to a massive 8.2 quake that struck in the same general area on Sept. 7 and a 7.1 magnitude quake on Sept. 19, which killed a total of 471 people between the two of them and damaged over 180,000 houses in eight states, including Mexico City.
The U.S. Geological Survey said Friday’s quake was centered 33 miles northeast of Pinotepa in southern Oaxaca state and had a depth of 15 miles.
Two people suffered fractures caused by the quake and were treated in Pinotepa Nacional. Their lives were not in danger.