Conan: The Mechanic

A few minutes later, among the ruins.

"I never thought that one day I would work with you in disaster relief." Jing Goku walked forward. "However, at least today, it's a good thing."

"It's not all about Mr. Kyogoku's extraordinary talent," the robot followed behind him indifferently. "However, Mr. Jinggoku was able to guess my identity, which is what surprised me the most."

"Calling us with Miss Miyano's mobile phone shows that you are in her network. And you are looking for a chance to only meet me alone, and want to avoid Sonoko, who has nothing to do with it." said back. "Looking at it this way, you are probably acquaintances of Miss Miyano and me at the same time. When you see that you are obviously different from professional athletes in the way of exertion and huge strength, you can see that you have not received professional training, but you have The power of the person. So...is there anyone close to Miyano-san who has just studied my body recently and seems to want to grasp the secret of my physical talent?"

"Indeed, Mr. Kyogoku's inference is not bad." The robot nodded. "To be honest, you have done an excellent job of giving me such power. For that, I must express my sincere gratitude to you."

"It's not necessary to thank you, it's the most meaningful thing to use this power on the right path." Jing Jizhen suddenly discovered something. "Over there... over there... are there many ruins over there?"

"..." The robot turned its gaze to that side. "Yeah, that should be an older traditional residential area in Kobe—maybe it was rebuilt after World War II and built before the 1950 Building Standards Act. I think we need to go over there and see. Can you help."

In front of them was exactly what Chiba had seen before, the traditional residential area hit by the collapsed bridge deck.

"Hopefully, there are still people out there who need help." This is what the robot didn't say, what Qianyu wanted to say.

As for Chiba herself? He is doing another thing.

…………

At the same time, at the bridge not far away.

"I thought I was wrong at the time," Chiba, who had already taken off her mask, crossed her arms and looked at the bridge pillar that was broken from the bottom in front of her. "I didn't expect it to be true, this thing was actually broken like this."

"Although I don't know much about earthquakes and structural mechanics," Hoshino Kaede stood beside him with a puzzled face. "But this kind of bridge...however, it should be the one that was most strictly required during construction, right?"

"That's natural," Qian Yu nodded calmly, looking at the broken stubble of the pillar. "This type of viaduct is supposed to be of a very high standard and shouldn't just collapse when the other buildings are still in good shape. But...to be honest, I don't think something is quite right - you see, these bridge columns are all similar The height of the column is broken, which indicates that the pillars have an obvious weak fault at this height level."

"..." Hoshino Kaede looked at the multiple broken bridge pillars nearby, and as expected, they found that the heights of the broken bridges were almost the same. "You mean that there is a quality problem with these bridge pillars?"

"If you're referring to that kind of manufacturing defect, then there's no reason why these things could pass the construction quality inspection after they were built—" Walking closer to the bridge column, Chiba began to observe the cross-section in more detail. "And if it's really a quality issue, we should observe that the weakest points of each bridge column are randomly distributed in different places, rather than staying at the same height. In contrast, I prefer to believe that it is There are design issues with these bridge columns."

Just when he was about to say something, the roar of a helicopter suddenly came from the air—judging from the coloring, it seemed to be a media helicopter.

"These guys came so early," Hoshino Kaede shrugged as he glanced in the direction of the helicopter with a little surprise. "However...what's the use of them coming? Judging from the earthquake situation, I think the most needed thing is definitely not the camera, but maybe..."

"It's not possible, but it must be a fire hydrant." Qianyu shook her head gently. "Fortunately, there is no windy weather today, otherwise Kobe would be in trouble."

Unlike most living resources, water is a fluid - once the storage container ruptures in an earthquake, the stored resources may all seep into the ground through the cracks and be completely lost. Although, in theory, the Kobe area's water supply system is designed specifically for earthquakes, 22 of the 30 reservoirs have emergency shut-off valves with radio remote controls, which allow them to prevent flooding in the reservoirs after part of the normal water supply line ruptures. The water flows out together. However, if it is judged by public information, the water that can be retained will not exceed 40,000 cubic meters, which is roughly equivalent to the residents of Kobe, and each person can only get about 27 liters of water ration.

And more importantly, after the earthquake, it is not only people who need water - Chiba's drone has observed more than 10 fires, and the extinguishing of these fires also requires a lot of firefighting water. After the earthquake hit the infrastructure behind it so hard, it's hard for firefighting vehicles to get to where they can put out the fire, and even fire water may not be enough. (Although Kobe sits right by the sea, pumping seawater and putting it into the fight against the coast still requires smooth roads.)

While they were discussing these~www.readwn.com~, the helicopter did not leave their area, but turned to their direction after slowing down a little.

"Huh?" Chiba, who hadn't paid attention to the helicopter at all, found this in the camera field of the drone parked at the top of the nearby building, and raised her head again in surprise.

"How did they..." Hoshino Feng also showed a surprised look. "They didn't come down on purpose to interview us, did they?"

Under the slightly surprised gaze of the two, the helicopter gradually lowered its height and lowered a rope ladder about 10 meters from the ground.

A white man in a suit and a Japanese man leaned out of the helicopter and climbed down the rope ladder.

Um? ? ?

"Who are you two..." When the two middle-aged men who looked to be in their forties and fifties fell to the ground, Qianyu asked a question hesitantly.

"We are seismologists who are preparing to attend an academic conference nearby," the middle-aged Japanese man introduced himself. "My family, Hirokazu Muramura, is a professor at the Faculty of Engineering at Kyoto University. We were planning to attend a conference in Osaka, but we didn't expect an earthquake in Kobe, so I took a ride with one of my colleagues... The helicopter is here."

"My name is Charles Scawthorm," the foreigner introduced. "Strictly speaking, it is a scholar who participated in the discussion with Professor Iamura, but in fact, when I was still studying at Kyoto University, he was already an assistant professor, so he can also be regarded as my teacher."

"Okay, let's not talk about that for now," Hiroshi Iamura and Professor Jiamura glanced at Qiaozhu, then turned back. "You... did you see what happened to this bridge when you saw the earthquake?"