Standing in knee-deep mud on the Southern River Embankment as Category-5 Super-Typhoon Black Dragon slammed into the Jiangnan River Basin, fifty-eight-year-old Chief Hydro-Engineer He clutched a concrete core sample in his calloused hands.
Gale-force winds screamed at one hundred and eighty kilometers per hour under an ink-black sky, ripping roof tiles off houses and bending iron streetlights double while torrents of rain poured into the main river channel.
Water levels rose two meters every hour, surging toward the twenty-meter flood crest as Chief He’s bloodshot eyes stared at the sample pulled from Section 4 of the flood dyke.
His hands shook with sheer horror.
“Look at this,” Chief He yelled over the howling gale, showing the sample to his young assistant, Xiao Wu. “Look at what they did!”
The cylindrical core was not solid high-tensile concrete.
Inside the thin outer shell of gray cement was a hollow core packed with rotting bamboo poles, river silt, and brittle clay bricks.
There was not a single steel rebar inside the core.
