The flood, the aftermath

December 12, 2019 6 Comments

Via Garibaldi under the lash. The image is fuzzy because of the merciless wind and rain. A video glimpse can be found on YouTube. (ilmeteo.it)

One month ago today the Big Water (“l’Acqua Granda,” as the disaster of November 12 was immediately dubbed), struck Venice, and I hardly know where to start my report. Theoretically I could have done this sooner, but when you have had ten inches of water in your house, even temporarily, it gives new meaning to the word “aftermath,” which is now synonymous with “exhausting,” “irritating,” and “stressful.”

The videos and news reports will have long since covered the general details, but I’ve found that putting things back together after a natural disaster is an experience all of its own. I won’t say it’s worse than water in the bedroom, but it’s not a whole lot better. Profound respects to any readers who may have endured similar, but worse experiences — avalanches, eruptions, typhoons, or earthquakes. You have had it much worse. Now, back to me.

On the positive side, all this a great reason to buckle down and get rid of tons of accumulated things which had, indeed, been slowly taking over our nonexistent space. So there is that. (However, see: “tiring,” above.)

I had just arrived in Virginia on November 11, as fate would have it, and on the 12th was reveling in the first day of my annual three-week R&R, when the lagoon rose up to smite Venice. Yes, Lino had to deal with wind, water, and general desperation all on his own. This entailed getting as much as he could raised or placed as high as possible in time, as per normal, notably the books on the lowest bookshelves, and the floor-level bottom drawers of the chests in the bedroom. But “in time” was suddenly dramatically redefined.

He is a veteran of acqua alta, having lived through many lesser ones and also the famous one of 1966. But what made this one different was not only the height — 187 cm above mean sea level, which covered some 80 percent of the city to one degree or another (1966 saw 194 cm) — but the ferocious wind. It must have been something like a hurricane, because not only did it make the water rise incredibly fast, but also created crashing waves that wrought havoc all along the exposed southern edge of the city. “I was looking out the door, watching the water rising,” Lino told me; “I turned around for a second, and then all of a sudden it was in the house almost up to my knees.”

Getting the sofa up on the chairs by yourself ought to qualify as an Olympic sport. Gold medal to Lino, which he totally would have preferred not to have had to win. No photos were ever made of the water in the house — he had about a thousand other things to think about, and as many things again that he had to do. However, he did tell me that all the shoes which had been neatly put away in the space below the lowest bookshelf in the bedrooms were floating around the house, which explains the saltwater stains on them which I may or may not ever face dealing with. Ditto the bottles of detergent and household cleaning products on the floor beneath the kitchen sink. All just floating around, like so much flotsam. “Good thing the lids on the bottles were all closed tight,” he cheerfully remarked.

Naturally all this was happening at night, and naturally almost all of our electrical outlets are at floor level, so he was going through all this in the dark with no heating. (Yes, candles and flashlights were at hand.) Then, when the tide turned, he spent three hours sweeping the muddy water out of the house, then cleaning the layer of fine slime from the floor.

But he was happy about one thing; “I saved the computer! I saved the computer!” he told me on the phone, in the way people in the old days must have said “I saved the cow!” The refrigerator, though, did not survive, even though we had long since set it up on five-inch beams of wood. The washing machine is fine, though, which is a great thing because whatever clothes and towels got soaked with seawater sat there for a week, busily mildewing, till I got back.

Immediate response came in various forms. Banks suspended the usual commission for ATM transactions by non-account holders because so many cash machines were dead. Also, mortgage payments were suspended till the end of the year, which could have been really nice except that we had just made the last payment on our 15-year mortgage in October. Yep — as soon as the house was totally ours, it went under.

The old fridge, our only casualty. It’s got plenty of company out and about; there are so many appliances to be hauled away that the trash-collection agency says they’ll get to us around January 15. They say they don’t have enough boats to do more.

Our only tangible loss was the 300-euro refrigerator, so not only can we not complain, there isn’t much point in running the bureaucratic obstacle course for potential reimbursement for that. Those for whom there is a point would be businesses whose power tools are kaput, for example, or the young couple at Osteria di Valentino. Of course they had already installed their appliances up to safety at 140 cm, but 47 additional centimeters (18 inches) inflicted damage worth 40,000 euros: two large refrigerators, a large freezer, the dishwasher, the deep fryer…

But at least their fryer was empty. The trattoria up the street hadn’t emptied the oil from their fryer in time, and the pressure of the water busted some valve and out came all the oil. So the owner had water, mud, AND oil on his floor.

Not to worry! He went to buy some big bags of sawdust, the time-honored medium for glop removal. Not only were there none to be found (everybody got there first?), sawdust is now forbidden, he was told, in places where food is being prepared because the eponymous dust might contaminate the food. “I’ve used sawdust for 30 years!” he said. Well, that was then. Now we know better?

The waves broke down part of the wall at the Giardini vaporetto stop, not only by the dock but also further along. The southern-facing side of the city got it in the teeth. At the Zattere, an entire newsstand kiosk was blown into the water (since hauled up to great applause.)

Further along the waterfront by the Giardini.

The violence of the wind and waves tore some of the gangways away from their docks. The docks at Sant’ Elena have been like this since Nov. 12; the vaporettos currently use a nearby dock. The dock at the Arsenal is similarly out of service, and part of the Giardini dock is missing the gangway, so we use one for going and coming. No telling how long this will last.

The Sant’ Elena dock has just been left like this till they can get around to repairs. This gives a small idea of the chaos of that night. A small anecdote: A naval officer at the Morosini naval school and his wife were trying to get back to Sant’ Elena from some mainland errand. He told me that they waited fruitlessly at Santa Marta for longer than usual, not quite realizing the dimensions of the hecatomb taking place slightly eastward. Or maybe they were just hoping that transport could somehow keep functioning. No vaporetto appeared, so eventually they hailed a passing water taxi. “We were going along the Giudecca Canal, but the wind was unbelievable,” he told me. “The taxi, even at full speed, wasn’t moving forward at all. We were just staying in one place and finally he turned around and took us to the nearest point and put us ashore. He didn’t even charge us anything.” (They walked home.) I heard several people referring to how the taxi drivers were out and about, helping people in trouble for free. This is worth noting in a city that seems to live according to the motto “Every man for himself.”

As I mentioned, wind. They got this tree chopped up really fast, but the stump with roots is still there.

Even the little trees at Sant’ Elena got blown nearly flat. Now they’re at least standing up.

Even stretches of the wall-less embankment at Sant’ Elena show signs of serious wear. If you follow the crack to the top of the image, you see that it had already given signs of giving way. Any time that a previous repair looks about to break, you’d better start over. But I’ll bet they just throw more grout, or whatever it is, in the cracks.

Wind drove the waves into various glass windows — the Cassa di Risparmio (Savings Bank) got the hit on the Riva dei Sette Martiri.

Evidently the bank’s glass door was destroyed, so a substitute was rigged up. Needless to say, the ATM machine was drowned, as were the other two in the neighborhood.

Speaking of ATM’s, this one simply says “Fuori servizio” (out of service.) It still is. We’ve been going to the Lido to use a cash machine.

Speaking of the Lido, I lugged a suitcase full of damp laundry to the laundromat on the Lido to dry it because the newish laundromat in via Garibaldi took a hit right in the dryers. The three washing machines, set up on the purple concrete platform, survived the inundation, but the two dryers in the back were, as they say, toast. The piece of paper on the glass door says “Guaste” — busted. Ruined. At least a week went by before the owner could get the man in to replace or repair the motors (or whatever). Last week one of the two was working, but extremely unwillingly. Loud screeching noises, and only tepid temperature. But I would never have said anything — I have to give the guy credit for getting them working even a little.

Maskmaker Carlo Setti’s little shop in Frezzeria didn’t have much defense, considering that it’s already two steps down from street level.

This shop just around the corner from Carlo sells expensive, elegant fashion, but even being two steps up didn’t save it from doom.

Fancy dresses are one thing, but expensive lumber is quite another. The gondola-maker at the squero of San Trovaso lost some of his valuable long-seasoned wood; it just floated away before he could get to it.

A lot of the wood is stored behind the squero, where it looks to the ignorant eye like just a batch of old wood somebody threw out. Somebody didn’t, and somebody would really, really like to have it back.

There were two more exceptional high tides the week of the catastrophe, and then several “normal” high tides followed. at varying depths. The thing about normal acqua alta isn’t only that you have to put on your boots (which can’t possibly be regarded as a big deal), but that the water brings detritus ashore, then leaves it behind. This is just outside our front door.

I saw clumps and hanks of eelgrass (Zostera marina), left by the retreating tide, bestrewing the streets, often fairly far from the nearest canal.

On Fondamenta San Giuseppe there are three street-level houses side by side which demonstrate a certain primitive evolution in dealing with water at the front door. The dwellings with steps are generally said to have a “piano rialzato,” or raised level. It’s easy to see how even a few steps could make a difference, at least up to a certain height, which is our case. After which, oh well.

Just some of the nearby castoffs. A washing machine on the left (A), and on the right, a dark small stove and a small white refrigerator (B). I’m imagining that person A invited neighbor B to come over to cook their dinner in exchange for being permitted to go wash some clothes.

I saw so many soggy mattresses. Does everybody sleep on the ground floor? Anyway, our bed escaped because we did something smart, years ago, putting it up on big plastic supports. But I wasn’t anticipating acqua alta, I was just trying to create more storage space.

A street behind our place. I wonder how long it will be before the wall dries out, if ever.

The front door to the building where Lino was born and grew up. It’s still swollen and doesn’t shut completely, which is a situation you really don’t want in a front door.

A veteran of many high tides, and devoted to his hipwaders.

These boots have lived quite a life. By now they probably wish he’d leave them alone and let them leak in peace.

When the high water isn’t catastrophic, you can easily see that it’s not distributed evenly. The edge of this fondamenta illustrates the situation.

I’m used to this by now, but I still notice that it does me absolutely no good where I’m standing to see that the street up ahead is dry.

As you see, even just a little water is annoying when it’s in the wrong place.

I’d never noticed how many drains were sliced into the pavement on via Garibaldi till I saw how much water had come up and gone down. Of course you want drains to carry the water away, it’s just a little irksome that they also let it come up.

Some bright spark salvaged a tree branch, which was a good thing because it could have been a hazard in the water. It looks quite fine as a supplementary barrier. One might almost imagine it to have been some work of art from the Biennale.

And in Calle Lunga San Barnaba, in ever-so-fashionable Dorsoduro, the owner of this upscale eyeglass shop was especially witty. I notice the quip is written in English, for foreign consumption. You could translate this into Italian, or Venetian, but I’m not sure that the locals would have found it to be especially humorous.

Even more than seeing flowers in spring or golden retriever puppies, any new appliance now makes me feel that life will go on.

Big fat delivery boats bringing succor and new consumer durables is a happy, and frequent, sight. It’s a bumper holiday season for the warehouses and the delivery people.

Every time a new washing machine is delivered, an angel gets its wings.

And speaking of damage, I took a walk along the Riva degli Schiavoni this morning. The damage from the waves is ugly, extensive, and probably will be here for quite a while. I suppose there is a Plan being devised as to the order and importance of interventions, but by the look of it at the moment, people are already getting used to things this way. Maybe we’ll find ourselves like those unfortunate earthquake survivors who are living in containers five years after the last aftershock. Or maybe five minutes before the next quake. Not sure how the thought process works.

The Arsenale vaporetto stop, even more than the one at Sant’ Elena, is lying there like a victim of a 20-car pileup on the highway, resting on a gurney in the Emergency Room at a permanent Priority 4 level while more desperate cases are moved forward.

This is undoubtedly a spot where a vaporetto was hurled by thrashing waves against the nearest immovable object. This being an area where vaporettos are normally tied up for the night, that seems the most likely scenario.

Moving west toward San Marco, there is this relic of some tremendous impact. I wonder what the vessel that did this looks like.

Toward the Danieli hotel, the storm has beaten the balustrade to the ground.

The former balustrade is in several large pieces, and the line of white squares is the only sign of the balusters, now gone somewhere.

I have the distinct impression that this part of the Riva degli Schiavoni, in front of the statue of King Vittorio Emanuele II, is now sliding toward the water. The fanlike shape of the dark area left by the waves is only one indication — standing there, you can pretty much see it.

The two docks at San Zaccaria are gone. I don’t know what’s being done with them, but they have left a very strange open space.

Prompt announcements of municipal reimbursements for damage caused some excitement: 5,000 euros to private citizens, 20,000 euros to businesses! But happy visions of the city councilors handing out bags of cash have been dashed.

Let’s say the funds are there, which I don’t actually know. What I do know is that there are too many problems and tempers are rising. The deadline for claims is too short (December 20), there is intense confusion on how to complete the claim forms, wrong information is being given out, what receipts are required, what sort of experts (too few, anyway) are able to prepare the necessary estimates on repairs and replacements. It’s turned into a sort of bureaucratic high tide all on its own. Of 2,900 claims submitted so far, only one in three has met the criteria for approval. And who can say when the reimbursement would finally be made? Some people who are owed money from disasters of various sorts from years ago are still waiting for the check. Or bag of cash, or whatever. I realize that frivolous and exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims are not to be encouraged, but creating problems while attempting to solve problems doesn’t sound like progress to me.

The Coop supermarket posted this very heartwarming notice in the store. I translate: “Venetians, we’re here. We have decided to gather funds for the emergency: Everyone can collaborate by choosing Coop products. Thanks to the solidarity of the Coop stores of all Italy, one percent of the sales of our trademarked products will be donated to the support of the population hurt by the high water, for a sum of at least 500,000 euros. GOOD SHOPPING CAN HELP VENICE.” This is heartwarming, and I should mention that the Prix supermarket chain has launched a similar initiative. But I have no idea how these things actually work, beyond the hot flash it gives you of feeling like you can do something to help out. (Apart from the incongruity of a Venetian, who perhaps has suffered in the disaster, going to spend money at the Coop in order to help Venetians.)

Acqua Alta

Water on the floor, and the day after

November 1, 2018 9 Comments

This is the view out our front door as the situation was reaching the problematic stage. In this case, though, it wasn’t so much the water that we were looking at as the height our boat was reaching. This was the point at we put on our hip waders and went to tie the boat to the barely-visible metal railing. The reason: The boat was in imminent danger of rising so high it would slip off the pilings it’s tied to and float away with the wind and the current. It happened to more than one person.

On October 29, 2018, there was water on plenty of floors. The tide wouldn’t have been all that high if the waning moon had been in charge of the weather, but the wind took over, reaching gusts of some 70 km/h (45 mph). The scirocco, or southeast wind, was what really brought the water home.

The media was flooded (sorry) with dramatic images of not one, but two “exceptional” high tides. “Exceptional” is the official term for any height over 140 cm above mean sea level (we got 156 cm at about 3:00 PM, 148 cm at about 11:00 PM). And, as Lino and I know from our experience ten years ago, 150 cm is the limit of the top step leading into our apartment. Therefore we had already gotten busy preparing our humble dwelling for this uninvited guest.

So the water came in but, in the time-honored way of the tide, it also went out. And I — along with everybody in the city at street level — can tell you that while “water on the ground” (as the common phrase here expresses it when the quantities of water are more modest) provides dramatic photos, water on the floor is tiring. Everybody’s next day was dedicated to cleaning up. Which is also tiring.

Because many friends have so kindly asked how we are (or, by this time, how we were), here is a little chronicle of the event as we lived it. There aren’t many pictures of the water outside our house because, as you’ll see, we had plenty to take care of inside.

It wasn’t fun, and of course it created major problems for vaporettos, ambulances, and other necessary boats which wouldn’t have been able to pass under the bridges. But the water here wasn’t anything like the monstrous flooding of the rivers devastating the Veneto region, where epic rain had filled some rivers, such as the Piave, up to 30 feet above their normal height. Bridges overwhelmed, roads completely impassable, houses drowned up to their second-story windows. Unlike high tide, flooding rivers kill people, so no wailing from us. Our water meant I had to dust and wash things I certainly had no interest in dusting or washing, but everything is back to normal for us. Out in the countryside, they can’t even see “normal” on the horizon yet.

The view inside was dramatic in a different way. Everything was either up on blocks, so to speak, or on the bed (which I won’t show because all the stuff piled up is just too appalling. And dusty. It’s been ten years since the last time this happened, and I had no idea how much dust there was under there).

I usually watch the top step at the front door to gauge the height of the water, but Lino showed me an entertaining new way to keep track: The tiny triangular brick in the wall across the street. That brick is exactly at 150 cm. So I watched the brick. Not much else to do, all the chairs were up on the table.

We opened the door, not because we’re so hospitable, but because the water would have come in under it anyway. On the right side of the doorway is the metal frame which was installed to hold the well-known panel intended to keep the water out. You notice there is no panel (it’s up on the sofa at the moment). The first time we used it — which was also the last time — the water didn’t come under the door, it came through the wall under the kitchen sink, and up through a fissure in the floor. This time it didn’t come through the wall, so we learned our lesson.

Meanwhile, as the water is spreading across almost our entire apartment floor, one can only wait for the tide to turn. There’s a difference between resignation and acceptance. When you’ve reached acceptance, having a coffee is the rational thing to do while waiting to be able to get back to normal.

The next morning, I had some errands to do on via Garibaldi. As I expected, what I saw wasn’t a scene of destruction and lamentation but universal enforced housecleaning. The Venetian bucket brigade, with mops.

While his son was busy with the water vacuum, Gianni at CityMedia got busy with the mop and a bottle of alcohol, which he said made the floor dry faster. Neat trick, wish I’d known that earlier. But I guess there will be a next time.

The Coop supermarket was kind enough to clarify the situation for any early customers who couldn’t interpret the significance of what the employees were doing. The Italian version on the right-hand side politely added that they would be opening as soon as they could. Please do without your bag of potato chips and bottle of beer for a little while longer.

At the pharmacy: Bucket and mop, check. Things up on plastic boxes, check. Soggy dirty mat at entrance, check. This would be the perfect moment to ask for lip filler, or to bring your little girl (or boy) to have a jolly ear-piercing.

The video-rental and various photo-tasks store. When the machinery is okay, everything is okay. They almost certainly will have installed the electrical outlets up high. If not, they may be well planning to do it as soon as some electrician answers the phone.

At the drygoods store, she wasn’t only wiping up the floor, but also washing the windows. I forgot to mention that for a brief, exciting interlude the ferocious wind brought a deluge of rain. It sounded like things were breaking outside. But this is her only, if toilsome, task; in the mountains there are still villages, isolated by masses of fallen trees and mudslides, which still have no electricity. They would love to be in Venice with only acqua alta.

I like her spirit; she must be new around here. In fact, she is; this bar/cafe (which has no visible name) has been open only a little while.

KirumaKata, another new shop, offers jewelry made of glass and also various ceramic objects. They’re very lovely. When I saw the barrier she had installed in front of the door (here we see only the frames), I thought, “Well, I hope that works out for her.” In fact, she told me that the panel keeps out water as high as 140 cm or so. After that — as our experience showed ten years ago — the water comes in however and wherever it wants to.

Three days later (Nov. 1) is a holiday, so the banks are closed. Here on the Riva dei Sette Martiri, the Cassa di Risparmio left the front door unbarricaded, even though acqua alta is forecast for today. This shows either extreme tranquillity in the face of imminent inundation, or they’ve already organized everything inside really well.

Towing a tree from somewhere to somewhere. Floating debris is a serious hazard to navigation, and there was plenty of it around after the high winds plus tide. Don’t think this is just somebody wanting to save on toothpicks.

Nor this. The flat area is often used as an impromptu trash bin (seeing that there isn’t one as far as the eye can see, even if you use a telescope). In this case the border just floated on the surface of the water, and when the tide went down it left all this behind. Including the little bag of dog poop, because otherwise this wouldn’t be Venice.

For the curious about the sanitation system here, I offer a rarely-mentioned note on acqua alta, at least at street- or canal-level. When the water is this high — which isn’t anything particularly threatening…..

….the pressure of the tide makes it almost impossible for our toilet to do its work efficiently. After flushing, only a few teaspoons of water are left in the bowl, after a series of struggling, strangling, sucking noises from the plumbing. I add this information for anyone who might be on the ground floor someday during acqua alta and hears a noise that sounds like a hydraulic wrestling match. Also, I don’t use the washing machine till the tide goes down — I can only imagine it not draining at all and flooding the kitchen. Which would already be wet anyway, true, but I haven’t reached the point of WANTING water on the floor.

MOSE

MOSE: It’s just money

January 14, 2018 1 Comment

By this point, the mechanics and components of MOSE could only be interesting to engineers, and maybe not even to them. So here are some pictures of the lagoon which do not show it at as the monstrous adversary against which Venice must be defended at all costs (“all costs” will be broken down below).

It’s not that I want to talk about MOSE any more than I want to gnaw off a hangnail, but it’s not my fault if wondrous developments continue to pop up in the endless saga of this undertaking. And even if you are not a connoisseur of wondrousness (wondrosity?) in bloated public works, there may be a few people left who still are interested in how this thing is getting along. By which I mean those people who used to ask me about it with such eagerness and curiosity and goodwill and hopefulness, seeing that until just a few years ago the Destiny of Venice was trumpeted by the press to be hand- and leg-cuffed to the success or failure of this … thing.

One recalls that the most recent date projected for finishing its construction (and beginning the TWO-YEAR TESTING) was the end of 2018. But brace yourselves: It’s going to be later. They say that the conclusion will be January 1, 2019. Or when the cassowaries return to Capistrano. Or when Jesus comes back. Everything depends on everything else, which is a fancy way of saying “money.”

“Creation of the animals,” by Tintoretto (c. 1550). It could be my imagination, but I detect a resemblance to the teeming Venetian lagoon here, which I suspect was not accidental.

Here is a rundown of the situation as outlined by Roberto Linetti (Interregional Superintendent of Public Works) to the city councilors a few days ago:

The job needs more money. (I can’t comment on that anymore; it’s like saying the sun needs to come up tomorrow.) It needs 221 million euros — as do we all — to finance the completion of 60 remaining aspects of the project, 40 of which must be finished this year. Only 40 million euros have been released from the total allotment so far, and the rapport between work done and payments made is not encouraging.

“The construction sites are not going well,” Mr. Linetti admitted. Everything is slowing down because the private companies have slowed down, which they’ve done because of the financial and legal Gordianosities of the Consorzio Venezia Nuova, the former governing consortium, and its collapse under the weight of its financial skulduggery. The companies have slowed down on working because payments due them are arriving even more slowly. “If the private companies aren’t motivated to go ahead,” said Linetti, “it’s hard to make them go ahead, even by kicking them.”

But every day that the construction is stalled, the underwater parts are deteriorating, which will only require more expenditure down the line. It’s a situation that brings to mind the notion that “We can’t stop fighting because otherwise our boys would have died for nothing.”

The MOSE annual budget also earmarks 15 million euros for caring for the lagoon (in unspecified ways). Considering how much damage to the lagoon the whole project is causing, that seems fair. Sort of. Nice they remember there is a lagoon.

Projected cost of administration and maintenance. This is a big one, which few people paid much attention to in the giddy days of selling contracts and all.

“We think that the administration of MOSE will cost about 80 million euros a year,” Linetti told the city councilors. “And that’s not much for a work of this importance and complexity in an area like Venice, considering that between 20-30 million are solely the cost of the utilities for the system’s functioning. Between 15-20 million euros a year will be for personnel, at least 100 of them. Then there are 30-40 million for the maintenance itself,” including the undefined work in the lagoon. Let me repeat that: The maintenance work itself will cost 30-40 million euros a year. “The State surely won’t fail to maintain its support.”

The maintenance work will be undertaken in the Arsenal, where the gates will periodically be brought to be cleaned, stripped and revarnished. Naturally a new hangar will have to be constructed for this work, which will cost 18 million. There are more zero’s swarming around the MOSE accounts than there are mosquitoes on Sant’ Erasmo at sunset in July.

Let the swans go live somewhere else, we’re busy operating big machinery and big bookkeeping programs.

And the use of the gates? The news is now that to protect Venice from exceptional high tide, it will probably be necessary to raise only the gates at the inlet at San Nicolo on the Lido, leaving the gates at Malamocco and Chioggia peacefully reposing underwater.

“The experts have verified,” said Linetti, “that closing only the inlet at the Lido will result in a significant lowering of the level of the tide in the historic center, without the necessity of closing the entire system.” So all that work and expense to build gates at all three inlets was…….pointless?

In fact, knowing that the Lido gates would be used the most frequently was the reason, according to Linetti, why more “materials” were dedicated to the construction there. And therefore, he says, “There will be a saving on the costs of maintenance.”

He has now totally lost me. Where do these savings on maintenance come from? On the gates that will be used more often (theoretically), or those which therefore will be used less? I could take high-powered binoculars and I still don’t see savings anywhere. At this point I’m not even sure what savings look like.

(I am indebted to the excellent reporting of Enrico Tantucci in La Nuova Venezia of 10 January 2018.)

MOSE, Problems

MOSE again, still, forever

September 13, 2017 4 Comments

If it weren’t for the lagoon, maybe people wouldn’t care quite so much about Venice. Interesting thought to ponder. But the lagoon would probably be better off without Venice, because then it wouldn’t be abused and tormented to make sure that Venice won’t have some water in the streets sometimes.

What everybody loves about Venice (among many things) is how old it is. And that is indeed a thing to love. I imagine all those amazing designers and builders and artists working away centuries ago, believing that their handiwork would last for, oh, maybe ever. And because they were first-rate craftsmen, it turns out that most of them were right.

You might say that MOSE is also going to last forever, but not in a good way. I don’t write updates on the continuing calamity that is the world’s most preposterous project because I’m bored by the mendacity, magnitude and monotony of the problems. Everything has gone, is going, and will be going, wrong with this thing until Jesus comes back, so updates are pointless. In fact, I’ve begun to suspect that the whole thing started with a bunch of drunk people sitting around one summer afternoon on some rich person’s yacht or private mountain, who decided to break the boredom by inventing a game in which the winner is the one who finds a way to waste the most money on the most pointless enterprise in the history of the world. If you can call it “winning.” Bonus points for environmental damage, or if somebody dies.

But the latest headlines have barged into my brain and made me think about it again, if only briefly, and my thoughts are not lovely. I can sum it up for you: Yet more things have been discovered to be screwed up, and fixing them will cost lots more money. This has become the refrain of the Marching Song of the MOSE Squadron, while the bass singers set the jaunty rhythm “Money for me, money for me, money for me…..” And as you read, consider (as I have) that if I had done the calculations, it’s obvious they would have come out all wrong. But I am not a civil engineer (I’m hardly civil at all) and I do not have a piece of paper from some institute which implies that I have studied how to do this work. But we must face the fact that the perpetrators of all this have such certificates.

Is there something about water that just baffles engineers in Venice? They ought to be experts, yet somehow the smallest details are just left unfixed. One might say that the flow of the water and/or the position of the grate of this fountain don’t really HAVE to match up, but then one considers the possibility that the designer was later hired to work on MOSE.

Here’s the headline on September 7, 2017 from the story in La Nuova Venezia by Alberto Vitucci:

MOSE, the gate of the lock at Malamocco has to be redone.

I will translate the main points in this and the following article:

The gate on the lock basin (“conca“) at Malamocco has to be redone. After the 400 million euros already spent, another 20 million will have to be invested for the “lunata,” the semi-circular breakwater shaped like the moon which protects the ships from waves and current as they position themselves to enter or as they exit.

Here is the inlet between the Adriatic (to the right) and the lagoon (to the left). It’s sort of like two boxers facing off before the gong. Clockwise from “lunata” we find: The construction yard of the caissons for MOSE, the tiny hamlet of Santa Maria del Mare, the lock to permit shipping to pass when the floodgates are closed in the inlet, the nature park at the Alberoni, the inlet which will be blocked by the raised floodgates in the case of exceptional high tide, and the Alberoni seawall.

The lock, you may recall, was dug to permit the passage of ships between the Adriatic and the lagoon whenever the floodgates are raised. But evidently every good idea contains the seeds of its own destruction, if you play it right. It was constructed in 2007 by the Consorzio Venezia Nuova (by means of the mega-company Mantovani) and designed by Technital ten years ago, which Vitucci recalls as “the golden age of MOSE, when money poured in without limits and without too much control.” But even then the design was clearly flawed, for which almost everybody involved is now paying the consequences.

Inadequate. Even though the breakwater extends 1300 meters (4,265 feet), its basin is too small for the latest generation of container ships, making it too risky for the big ships to attempt to enter the lock. Other than that, the “mobile” parts of the lock — the gates — cannot function because the water exerts too much pressure. The persons making those calculations might have been interrupted by a phone call, or the arrival of a pizza; anyway, it doesn’t work. This problem was discovered in 2015 when the gate gave way in the first storm. Urgent interventions are now in the hands of a Belgian company.

But not to worry! The president of the Magistrato alle Acque, Roberto Linetti, says that fixing it will only cost 18 million euros because the foundations are still good. And meanwhile, they’ll be able to add a few meters to allow the ships to pass. So you see? In the end, it was a good thing the gate didn’t work.

Infinite. Or “unfinished.” Or “unfinishable,” perhaps. What now bears the tired title of the “MOSE scandal” consists, as Vitucci lists it, of: “Bribes and consultants, off-the-books payments and always-positive evaluations rendered by friendly experts, extra costs due to the lack of competition and the necessity of accumulating “black” (untraceable) funds to pay the bribes. But also there have been obvious errors, such as the lock. What was intended to be a structure to prevent penalizing the port activity when the floodgates were up has been shown to be, at the end, the umpteenth useless big project.

Waste. The lock is far from being the only problem — there are the collateral “major works” connected to MOSE, each one of which is its own little one-act tragedy. The “jack-up,” the large “ship” which cost 50 million euros for transporting and moving the gates constructed by Comar and Mantovani, remains anchored at the Arsenal and has never been used because it doesn’t function, despite the repairs that have been made. There is also the damage to the seawall at San Nicolo’ on the Lido, which collapsed a few days after it had been tested. Tens of millions of euros thrown into the sea, as Vitucci (and probably many others) puts it. Damages will need to be paid for all those, too, but it’s not clear by whom.

This is the “jack-up.” Big, expensive, impressive, it makes no pretense of working.

But wait! There’s more! Is anyone wondering how the various components are managing to resist encrustation and mold? I can tell you! But before I do, pause to marvel at the astonishing presence of salt in seawater, not to mention algae and all sorts of cretures which insist on attaching themselves to things. Who could possibly have known, or even guessed at random, that the Adriatic contains salt and water?

The headline in the Nuova Venezia on September 7, 2017, on a story written by Alberto Vitucci:

Mold and degradation, the MOSE gates are already blocked.

“Big works = big mafias.” I don’t usually agree with graffiti, but this sums up the situation with admirable clarity.

“The encrustation is increasing; the paint is already old. And without electricity it’s impossible to raise the barriers. Mold and degradation in the corridors of the caissons beneath the lagoon. And the gates, exposed for six months to the weather and salt at Santa Marina del Mare, have to be repainted.

The installations. The latest problem is the delay in building the electric plant to raise the gates. MOSE needs energy to raise the gates because it doesn’t exploit the natural energy of the sea and waves. … Unlike the sequence of events at San Nicolo’, where the power plant was installed first, at Malamocco it was decided to position the gates on the lagoon bottom before the power plant was built. Result: For several months the gates have lain on the bottom but it’s impossible to test raising them.

Corrosion and fouling. The first inspections revealed corrosion and encrustation. The lack of electricity has prevented the correct ventilation underwater where the cables and systems pass, not to mention the workers. The walls are covered with a layer of mold 5 centimeters (2 inches) deep. MOSE is a system conceived to remain underwater, and without maintenance, the problems multiply, such as the corrosion of the hinges (of the gates) that was reported several months ago. What to do? The Consorzio Venezia Nuova announced a competition for bids on the construction of the systems. Two groups won, the Abb Comes of Taranto and the Abb Idf of Brindisi. But the proposal to realize some temporary systems to move the gates wasn’t approved. It would have cost 14 million euros, so just let the gates sit underwater, blossoming.

Several months ago, the gates underwater at Treporti began to show accumulations of barnacles, mussels, and crabs — sea-dwelling creatures which were not exactly unknown before the work started.

The paint is peeling. Because there is no electricity or apparatus to install them, the 30 gates that were supposed to be lowered into the water have been waiting for months on the construction site of the caissons. The delay is due to the non-functioning of the “jack-up.” (Some gates were constructed in Croatia and brought across the Adriatic from Split.) During these months, the workers have battled the weather and the seagulls, which have begun to nest in the gates, as follows…..

MOSE: Even the seagulls are stripping the paint.

Information from the article by Alberto Vitucci, La Nuova Venezia, 29 April 2017

It turns out that the beached (so to speak) gates sitting at the construction site are a very attractive home for nesting seagulls, sort of like LeFrak City for waterfowl. But their guano is damaging the paint, and eventually corrodes the metal too. The birds stab at the peeling paint with their beaks, trying to strip it off (boredom? sport? snacks?). Protective tarpaulins have been spread over the gates, but large spaces have been left open for work on the hinges, so ….

Bring on the scarecrows! (I mean gulls): Deafening recordings of frightening sounds. They tried an amped-up donkey braying because an ethologist said that birds are afraid of it. Birds, sure, but not gulls, who fear almost nothing anymore. Next, a high-volume dog growling. Nope. In the end, the only thing that works is a cannon firing blanks, so cannonfire is now periodically heard in the lagoon, followed by the wild flapping of hundreds and hundreds of wings of birds that soon return.

How long will all this be going on?

The timetable. According to the latest schedule — after deadlines passed from 2011 to 2014, then 2017, then 2018 — the work will be finished by 2021. Four (or five or ten?) more years of astonishing stories to come. And I haven’t even said anything about the subsidence of the lagoon bottom beneath the caissons due to the powerful force of the tides (tides? there are tides in the sea? what??) which appear to be distorting the position of the gates…..

Life on earth requires many adjustments. Shown here is a reasonable solution to a problem. I have no images of a reasonable solution to any of MOSE’s problems.

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