A 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Mexico has left millions without power

A woman embraces a boy as a powerful earthquake rocks Mexico City on February 16, 2018.
(Image credit: Yuri Cortez/Getty Images)

A 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck the Pacific coast of Mexico Friday, leaving about one million homes and businesses without power.

No one was killed by the initial quake, but 13 people died and several more were injured when a military helicopter crashed onto two vehicles while surveying the damage. Mexico's interior minister and the governor of the state of Oaxaca were both in the helicopter when it went down, but neither was injured.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.