check that barn door

Worth protecting? Pretty sure we can agree on that.

May it be far from me to herald the new year with a broken string or rusty trombone, but although I have almost completely lost interest in reporting on Venice’s daily misadventures, I can’t resist this one.  I should, but I can’t, because what happened seems like it ought to raise at least a chuckle.  Instead, I think it’s more deserving of a resounding raspberry.

You have heard of the Great Man theory of history?  I propose the unfortunate incident of January 6 as an example of the theory, yet to be named, of the phenomenon by which is is almost guaranteed that the simplest task will also prove to be the most important, and the easiest to forget at the moment of crisis.  Or put it this way: If something is going wrong, the office tasked with providing measures against wrong-going will be closed for the holiday weekend, call back on Monday.

Brief context: Vast work was completed in November 2022 to encircle the basilica of San Marco with a glass wall to defend it from acqua alta.  Too many years, rounded off to the nearest century, of saltwater soaks have damaged the mosaics and marble columns of the narthex, damage I have seen with my own eyes.

Although the MOSE system had finally become functional by then, the lagoon barriers were intended to be raised (it was said) only when the tide was predicted to reach 140 cm above mean sea level.  It costs hundreds of thousands of euros each time to raise the floodgates, and they are only useful for a few hours, so the deciders have to decide if the expected height of the water justifies the cost.  That is a very tricky calculation to make, as you can imagine.

Water outside, dry stones inside.  Seems like the problem has been solved, yet this is only a temporary measure.  A mastodontic project to raise the Piazza itself is being discussed, in which case the glass wall will be removed.  Then again, this temporary construction may well follow the Accademia Bridge into the category of “temporary forever.”

Of course, as soon as that level was stipulated as raising-gates time there came wails and shrieks from all sides, people objecting to the (to them)  unreasonably high limit.  So the city rapidly backtracked, and the likely level for floodgate-raising dropped by tens; it went down to 130, then 120, then 110, then even 100.  It was like an auction in reverse where the bids are decreasing.  In any case it appears that the cutoff height seems to be slightly negotiable.

The Piazza San Marco stands at 85 cm above mean sea level, so it is destined to be damp even with the most modest inundations.  And the basilica couldn’t be expected to tolerate small water on the stone while waiting to be protected from big water.  Therefore the highly excellent idea of protecting the basilica alone was mooted, and budgeted, and scheduled, and accomplished.

Nobody thought they were ever going to see this again.  This was the morning of December 11, 2008.
I thought this was beautiful when I saw it, it made me think of Atlantis. But now I know better. Or worse, if you want to put it that way. Much worse.

And yet, on the morning of January 6, water rose to a mere 97 cm in the Piazza; not enough to require MOSE to be activated, by any means, but enough to drench the narthex of the basilica just as it had in 1859 (made up.  Could have put 1759.  1620.  1492.)  The very thing that 5 million euros had been spent to prevent just up and happened all by itself.

Because there are openings in the glass barrier wall to permit people to enter the church.  Those openings must be closed with the typical metal barrier, otherwise there’s no point in having the wall.  Workers (usually from the two construction companies involved) have to put up the barriers.  And somebody has to tell them to do it.  But if you haven’t got the workers because they’re all off duty for the holiday weekend, does it matter who is responsible for ordering all hands on deck?  Of course it does.

Sensible, simple, and easy.  The lower metal barrier makes the whole arrangement perfect.  Amazing how ineffective the glass wall is when the metal barrier isn’t there.
It’s not Hadrian’s Wall, but it’s impressive.  Too bad it’s all just for show if those little metal rectangles are missing.

Not made up.  The workers were absent.  The person who provides for emergency interventions somehow did not check the tide forecast, even though everybody in Venice does it about ten times a day.  Perhaps that person didn’t check because he/she/they were also away somewhere.  In any case, for anybody to have usefully been on tide-watching duty they’d have had to be at the basilica before 6:00.

Please recall that January 6 was Epiphany, and a Saturday, so plenty of workers and employees of all sorts were probably still enjoying the Christmas holidays.

By the time that personnel at the basilica realized that nobody was coming to insert the barriers to block the tide, the church was taking on water like H.M.S. Indefatigable after striking the reef.  The narthex was flooded.

Whoever left the barn door — I mean, basilica-gate — open must have spent a lively interlude in somebody’s office on Monday morning attempting to explain.  Anyone listening at the door might well have heard one phrase shouted for 15 minutes: “You had ONE JOB.”

This is how it looks when all the pieces are in place. You see the entrance walkway passes neatly over the metal barrier.  If the water were to rise higher, an extra metal barrier would be placed on top of the first one.  Or maybe MOSE would be activated.  Or something.  All that’s needed is people to actually make it all happen…..
“You had ONE JOB.”

 

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MOSE makes history

 

I’m not going to lie: I never thought I’d see this day.  Either it would never come, or by the time it did, I’d have long since turned into tera de bocal (clay for making chamberpots, as they put it here).  But here we are, or more specifically, there it was this morning — the Adriatic to the right, the lagoon 70 cm lower to the left, and the vaunted MOSE floodgates ensuring for the first time that the twain shall never meet.

Years, decades, lifetimes have been devoted to constructing (and paying for) this thing, and I had little (in ErlaSpeak that means “no”) expectation that the gates would ever function.  But they did.  Allow me to doff my chapeau and say I’m not only astounded, but slightly weirded out.  Because hearing three signals on the warning siren at 8:00 AM put all my nerves on high alert, even though we’re not in danger till four signals warn us of the possibility of the tide’s exceeding our personal domestic ground-level safe limit of 150 cm.  Instead: Nothing.

I think everybody’s nerves have been a little tense, after two days of forecasts predicting an acqua alta to peak today at 135 cm above mean sea level at 12:05 PM.  But at 9:00 AM (and at a mere 70 cm of rising tide) it was instead the long-discussed, -doubted, -reviled floodgates that rose, and stopped the sea at whatever the watery analogy of “in its tracks” may be.  At the measuring station at the Diga Sud of the Lido the tide was at 119 cm, but the water at the Punta della Salute — bacino of San Marco, basically — was at 69 cm.  When the tide turned, just after noon, it had reached 129 cm, but in the city was only a paltry 73.

This graph clearly shows the track of the tide, from its lowest point at 6:00 AM to the moment when the gates began to rise.  Game, as they say, over.

We went outside to look at our canal.  The water wasn’t moving.  A lost pear, fallen from the fruit/vegetable boat upstream, was bobbing tranquilly in one place when it ought long since to have been carried off by the rising (or, by then, falling) tide.

Even on a normal day, the water in the canal is almost always moving at some speed, in some direction; only briefly, twice a month, does the tide pause in what is called the morte de aqua (“death of the water”).  But here it was, stock still.  It might as well have been in the bathtub.  And so it remained until some time after the Adriatic began to withdraw; I suppose that didn’t need to be said, but perhaps someone other than myself might have forgotten that you wouldn’t lower the barrier until the sea was at least even with the level of water in the lagoon.

I didn’t used to think of 135 cm as anything more than “God, this is annoying.”  But I think it’s fair to say that the doomsday inundation of November 11-12, 2019 is still too screamingly fresh in everybody’s mind to allow the casual return of “Sure, this is Venice, what do you expect?” Any tide above normal now appears potentially apocalyptic.  And if our nerves were slightly on edge, so were those of the hopeful travelers who had booked hotel rooms and then, having heard early mentions of the dreaded words “acqua alta,” quickly canceled the reservations.

That’s too bad, because they missed a verifiably historic moment.  And I’m glad I was here to see that pear not going anywhere in our canal.

The breakwater at San Nicolo’ on the Lido was an excellent spot for watching this epic event.  This clip gives a sense of the force of the wind, always a crucial player on Team Flood Venice.  This morning it was up to 41 kph (25 mph).

In case the still photograph above doesn’t convey the dynamic of what’s happening, this video from Corriere della Sera (particularly at the beginning and end of the clip) gives a glimpse of the force of the tide, as seen against the barriers as they rise, one by one.  Fun fact:  It took one hour and 17 minutes to raise all 78 of the gates, so the process obviously needs to start in a timely manner and not wait till the last OMG minute.

Beautiful in its way…
But this is astonishingly beautiful: Noon today in the Piazza San Marco, the moment of the peak tide which ought to have covered the pavement with some 45 cm/17 inches of lagoon.  The only water that dampened the stones here came from the clouds.

Note:  Two videos, and all of the images with the exception of the water in the Piazza San Marco, were forwarded to me by friends via WhatsApp, so I am unable to give appropriate credit to their sources.

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Waterworld again

 

It seems as if there is just about every form and manifestation of water to be had around here, at some point or other.

To take an extreme example, we had some weather yesterday evening.  A friend sent me this clip of the scene at the Rialto Bridge (I don’t know who made it, but I absolutely wish I’d been there).  All that’s missing are a few spawning salmon and a hungry bear.

And then there is The Drainpipe.

Lino is obsessed by this drainpipe, and I can’t say I blame him. I’m not qualified to suggest a different setup of the pipe, but if somebody had wanted to find a solution I bet they would have.
The reason isn’t so much the pipe, in itself, but how blithely it makes itself at home over a rather worthwhile plaque. Seems rude — that’s what the issue comes down to. It’s the kind of thing I’d have been worked-up about, back before obsession-fatigue set in.  (Translated by me): “Restored the aforementioned two rooms by reason of Domenico Marchio Celsi by his heirs in the year 1686.”  I suppose it looked just fine for 300 years or so, then progress intervened.  As it does.
This unhappy sight is out there for anybody to see — how embarrassing — who takes a short-cut down a very small and narrow side street near us. Does it seem wise to order a new street-level door made of iron in a place where salty water is almost guaranteed to soak it? “Gosh, look at that,” Lino said. “Wow.”  Or let me put it this way: Seeing that there are methods for removing rust from marble, does it seem wise to leave it this way at the entrance to an apartment that’s rented to tourists?  First impressions and all.  

Not made up — the door leads to one of the thousands of rentable apartments in town.
The house next door was not stricken, as you see — the entrance is higher, which always helps, and the door is made of wood. Not perfect either, considering how wood swells when wet, though I don’t know if that happened here.   And something regrettable happened to the stone step and its underpinnings.  That’s a thing about Venice — even when everything is bone dry, water still has the last word.
There are plenty of signs still visible of the damage caused by the hideous high water of November 12, 2019. This is in our doctor’s office.  You see how intelligent the builders were in placing the electrical outlets up so high.  They may have thought they were exaggerating, but not really.

People sometimes ask me how deep the water is in the canals. And I always ask, “At high tide, or at low tide?”   And they go, “Ummmmm…..”.
The extreme low tides in winter went on longer than usual a few months ago. As long as you have enough water to keep  the boat afloat, you’re fine — but only if you’ve figured out a way to climb onto (or off) your boat in a way that doesn’t threaten you with bodily harm.
Our boat, second from the bottom of the frame, presents an unreasonable challenge at low tide.  Life, limb, and the pursuit of happiness — in this situation, you can either plummet onto the boat from the fondamenta, or on your return you can attempt to scale the wall with no tools at all.  I finally bought a rope ladder.
This is a simple, classic Venetian boat called a sandolo; it can be bigger or smaller, but this is the essential shape of several everyday boats. Just setting the scene here, giving a sense of scale to clarify the next photographs.
Let me present one of my own favorite fixations: How the boat-builder made such a rookie mistake as to put the water-draining hole (“ombrinale”) where the water doesn’t flow.  It’s easy to see the rainwater that has collected on the bow; the boat is intentionally stored tilting forward in order to aid the drainage.
But in this case, the water has collected upstream, if you will, and has no way to drain out by itself.  You can see the hole helplessly sitting by itself on the right side of the wooden barrier, and the accumulated water sitting equally helplessly on the other side.  It’s like Pyramus and Thisbe.  Let’s say anybody can make a mistake (the worker never read the plans?  Had never encountered a boat before?  Or water?  Or gravity?).  All that needed to be done to solve the problem was just to cut another hole on the upstream side.  But as you see, here we are.

 

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Anybody remember MOSE?

This is the city, so in need of protection and defense.

The division of history into the still-common categories of B.C. and A.D. is rendered in Italian as A.C. and D.C. (not to be confused with electric current or rock bands).  It stands for “Avanti Cristo” and “Dopo Cristo” (before and after Christ).

I’m going to propose we keep using A.C. and D.C., but now they’re going to stand for “Avanti Coronavirus” and “Dopo Coronavirus.”

Before Coronavirus, we had problems with tourism (which immediately became problems without tourism).  And we had acqua alta.  And we had MOSE, and still have MOSE, and will always have MOSE till eternity has been reduced to the nucleus of the hydrogen atom and is extinguished.

To recap:  Acqua alta is something that happens.  It can be extreme, and sometimes extremely damaging.  So it was decided, after the still-champion event of November 4, 1966, that the solution would be barriers composed of mobile “gates” that would be raised to block the water’s entrance into the lagoon, a/k/a Venice.  (I make that distinction because the MOSE people don’t care about the lagoon — it is being built to protect the city.  The damage that this construction has done and continues to do to the lagoon isn’t mentioned by the MOSE people, but it remains nevertheless.)

This is the lagoon, equally in need of protection and defense.  At dawn on a muggy morning in June, Lino is clamming, the tide is going out, and life is beautiful.  You’d never know that a world-class city was so close yet so detached.

How are things going?  Well, about as usual, which means moving ahead by fits and starts, badly and expensively.  This form of progress attracted notice from time to time until the catastrophic acqua alta on November 12, 2019 that simultaneously drowned and battered the city.  The morning after was full of wailing, as you would expect, and among those wails were angry voices saying that if MOSE had ever been finished on time (like, at least ten years ago) and in working order (this will always be doubtful), the city would not have suffered this appalling disaster.  The rough translation would be “Hey — those floodgates you all have been blowing smoke about for the last 30 years?  This is EXACTLY the situation they were intended to protect us from.  So where the f*#k are they already?”

Quick reply: “We’re on it!  June!  They’ll be done in June!”

So, good news: Being a major public work, its construction has not been blocked by the quarantine, though health security for the workers –staying at least one meter apart, in a tunnel under the water — is not easy.  And at the Lido/San Nicolo’ site, they don’t have protective gear at all.  But on we go.

Did I say “June 30”?  That’s when the installations are supposed to be complete.  Will they be working?  Unlikely.  They’re not going to be declared fully functional, ready for prime time, let’s cut the ribbon, until December 31, 2021.  The mayor is livid, and has generally made it known to the administrative body, the Consorzio Venezia Nuova (CVN), that this fall Venice is going to be facing high water again, and the gates better the f*#k be ready by then.

You know what’s coming next: Money.  We have none, and yet rivers of money keep flowing to all sorts of offices and individuals. One million euros have been spent so far on the “super-commissioner” assigned to oversee MOSE with her office/staff (engineers, lawyers, tech wizard, press officer).

Money also has to be found to pay the salaries of the 250 employees of the CVN and two associated entities.  And money has to be found to repair the many problems on the construction up till now, including modifying the special basin to allow ships to enter at Malamocco if the gates are raised.  The current basin, which cost 360,000,000 euros, not only was damaged by a storm in 2015, but has been found to be too small.

Yes indeed, there is still more:  The original project plan stipulated that the 78 gates have to be replaced every five years (five years after they begin working).  But there are gates that have already been lying underwater for more than five years — in the case of the ones at San Nicolo’-Treporti, since 2013.

But before replacement, there must be maintenance: cleaning, scraping off the heavy encrustations of barnacles and other clingy creatures, probably tasks aimed at gears and hydraulics, checking the condition of the tubes that carry the compressed air that powers the raising of the gates, etc.  The cost of maintenance?  Now projected to be 100,000,000 euros per year.  No, wait — it actually says “at least 100,000,000 a year.”

The news today reported that 40,000,000 euros have arrived in the city’s coffers of the 84,000,000 earmarked by the state to repair November’s devastation to the city and pay indemnities to businesses damaged by the acqua alta.  This is excellent news and comes none too soon, but then I look at the numbers.  It costs more to maintain the gates than it does to repair the city?

Now we hear about the cost of the consultants.  I suppose every project has consultants, though it’s not clear to me why, if you’ve already got professionals on the job in every category, you need to hire more.  A list was published in the Gazzettino on April 2 detailing monies spent in 2014 and 2019 in three areas: Administrative, Legal, and Technical.  “Administrative” includes three (3) special administrators paid 240,000 euros each.

In 2019, what with one thing and another, 3,000,000 euros were spent on consultants.  And about 2,000,000 of those were spent on lawyers.  So many things have gone wrong for so long that evidently you couldn’t have too many, and they all cost money.  One lawyer was paid 900,000 euros (admittedly he had plenty to do; he was employed by the  Consorzio, which was batting away lawsuits from suppliers and other offended parties like King Kong fighting the airplanes).

I may have said this before, but it’s worth repeating:  MOSE was supposed to save the city, but looking at these numbers, I’m beginning to think that somebody needs to save the city from MOSE.

Piazza San Marco, where the city and lagoon meet when the tide rises above 85 cm above mean sea level.  MOSE isn’t intended to prevent ANY water from coming ashore, just water above 110 cm.  That is, if it is ever completed, and the city can find the money to keep it in working order after all the consultants have been paid.

 

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