T
he Pentagon evacuated Tuesday after a 5.8-magnitude earthquake rattled the East Coast, sending people pouring into the streets wondering what was going on. Those inside the Pentagon said they could see the walls shaking and feel the entire building moving beneath them. The earthquake, which struck just before 2 p.m., was located 88 miles southwest of Washington and 36 miles northwest of Richmond, Va., in an area that is not normally seismically active, according to the US Geological Survey. “It’s one of the largest that we’ve had there,” USGS seismologist Lucy Jones told CNN. (At first, the USGS labeled the quake a 5.8 magnitude, then 5.9, and then back to 5.8.) By 3 p.m. most employees were back at their desks inside the Pentagon, an Air Force spokesman told the Daily Report, and there was little damage reported. However, a water main did break on the fourth floor. Officials at Langley AFB, Va., said they felt the tremors but no damages were reported. (CNN report)
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…