Water | Venice: I am not making this up

Venetian Lagoon reverie

December 12, 2010 5 Comments

Water is such an fundamental part of Venice’s fascination that it would be silly to imagine the city without it.

But if you want to discover something equally beautiful, you should look at the water without the city. Go out into the lagoon, preferably in a small boat with oars, and above all, do it in the winter.

Habit, if not logic, induces us to believe that a great day out on the water requires sunshine, heat, cold beer, and all the other appurtenances of a summer weekend. Or month.

But I have a Venetian friend — and I know he’s not alone — who, when the spring warmth begins to creep across his shoulders, shrugs and says resignedly, “Well, it’s the end of the beautiful season.”

The first time he said it, I thought he might be unbalanced. Now I say it too.

This is the only boat we saw, apart from a small sailboat. The good part was that they were gone really quickly.

Of course there are positive aspects to summer here. But when summer brings sun to the lagoon it also brings the sun’s entourage, which is everybody in the entire universe in loud boats with loud families, rampaging around, creating waves, havoc, and confusion. The waves in themselves belong to a particular species of confusion — aggressive, chaotic, senseless. You know how, if you drop a potato chip on the ground, in two minutes ants are swarming all over it? The lagoon in the summer is that potato chip to uncounted thousands of people, almost all of whom look alarmingly alike.

But as October blends into November, and into early December, as winter breathes itself into the year and we wake up to a world wrapped in filmy fog, the lagoon changes, or rather reverts, to its true self, an intricate, delicate, harmonious realm.

These are what I think of as the mother-of-pearl days, when the sky and water share a nacreous, faintly gleaming quality and the air is almost still. Days like this are the Japanese tea ceremony, Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites, of weather. Normal people looking out the window feel an urge to make hot cocoa and lie on the sofa. I can’t wait to get out.

When we go rowing in the fog, everything is beautiful — the sharp air, the little melody of the water passing under the boat (which thanks to the absence of motorboats one can actually hear), and the silence itself. It’s a soft sort of silence, that floats on swathes of water that are perfectly flat yet crinkled with myriad tiny waves which the imperceptible breeze has created and is now trying to smooth out again.

Simpliciti itself: You put a small crab into the trap, then jam the bamboo pole into the lagoon bottom. You go do something else for a while, then you come back, collect your haul, and start over again. You notice that the lagoon water is extremely far from murky; this degree of clarity is normal in the winter. — Simplicity itself: You put a small crab into the trap, then jam the bamboo pole into the lagoon bottom. You go do something else for a while, then you come back, collect your haul, and start over again. Notice that the lagoon water is extremely far from murky; this degree of clarity is normal in the winter.

We took the boat a few days ago on one of those perfect days: chilly, nebulous, with almost nobody in sight. We were aided in this solitude not only by the weather, but by the fact that it was a national holiday (the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for the record), which meant that people weren’t working, which cut down drastically on the traffic. Just to see so much empty space was like getting a present in the mail.

Before long, real winter will arrive, bringing frost, ice, snow, scimitar winds slashing down from Siberia (I did not make that up). One year we went rowing on the day after Christmas (also a holiday); it was during one of those Arctic snaps and in a few small canals a film of ice had begun to form, which my oar broke with a neat slice. Rowing back, the wind was so strong it blew the frigid spray over our mascareta, turning to ice on the bottom. It was like rowing standing on a skating rink. With each oar stroke I thought, “If I slip, I’ll never get my footing again.” Which led me to wonder how exactly we’d ever get home. These thoughts distracted me from the inconceivable coldness of the wind and the fact that it made absolutely no sense to be out there.

On those days the world is dazzling, cut by diamonds. Beautiful, sure. Anybody can see that.

But fog is insidious, seductive, gossamer, enchanting. Tranquil. Restorative.

I’m improvising here. None of these words, and not even all of them, can do this brief little season justice, but they’re the best I can manage.

Water

Water coming ashore

December 3, 2010 No Comments

What is it about December that seems to call the acqua alta with a siren song of irresistible allure? Other people are already thinking about Christmas, but at the moment (6:00 AM) I am thinking about where to put all the stuff that’s on the floor for when the tide tops the predicted 140 cm.

The maximum is forecast for 8:45 and maybe, seeing that is very little wind, and it’s from the north, just maybe we will escape having the lagoon pay us a personal visit. Then again, maybe not.

High water gets here by any and all routes, not merely by spilling over the edges of the sidewalks. It comes up through the drains. And here you can see that it also comes up through any possible cranny. I discovered this tiny hole in the pavement in front of our house only after I noticed the little ripples caused by the invisible jet of water beneath the surface. Oh well.

I mention this for two reasons.

One, because a year ago, the first time the tide reached that height, it did indeed come indoors. Of course we blocked the entrance, which I guess works for some people but for us it only slowed the arrival of the old H2O. And the barrier did nothing, as you may recall, to stop the water from coming in through the wall under the kitchen sink, or up through a fissure in the floor.

The butcher up the street doesn't look too concerned (Nov. 30, 2009).

Two, because I don’t want you to think that when I scoff at the chronic drama suffusing reports of high water, that I am doing so because I am at no risk of having to sweep the lagoon out of the house, then wash the floors with fresh water.

I scoff because washing the floors is a good thing and I should do it more often. And also because last week we put the refrigerator and the washing machine up on wooden beams, three inches above the floor. Yesss!

And I scoff especially today because last night I read the weather news from Eastern Europe and it’s a goddam disaster out there. An Arctic front has assaulted every country from Germany to Albania, visiting blizzards, icy rain, and record sub-zero temperatures on millions of people. People trapped in their cars all night on the highways in the snow, people freezing to death, major airports closed, hundreds of cancelled flights. Thousands evacuated from their flooded houses, and I mean really flooded; some of these dwellings are now ruined by more than three feet of water inside.

More severely undisturbed people getting on with the day (Nov. 30, 2009).

And then we read the forecast for Venice: Acqua alta. I have to tell you, after the deafening symphony of catastrophe from out there, “high water” sounds like a little tune played on a baby’s xylophone.

An inch of water on our floor for two hours, if that’s what transpires, doesn’t deserve more than a few deep sighs. Of course it will be higher in the Piazza San Marco — of course it will be inconvenient for people going to work (the tourists love it, so they don’t count) and will require walking on narrow walkways (I mean, if you haven’t already figured out that you needed to put on boots), and the vaporettos will all be sent up the Grand Canal for a couple of hours because they can’t get under two of the bridges on their route, so people will have to walk somewhat further than they normally do to get from their usual vaporetto stop to wherever they’re going. Terrible.

The emergency forces are out all over Europe trying to save people’s lives. Here, by noon it’s all going to be over.

It’s almost embarrassing.

If you sell things that water could damage, you plan ahead. This shop also has the barrier across the front door, but the owners wisely activated Plan B (Nov. 30, 2009). — If you sell things that water could damage, you think ahead. This shop also has the barrier across the front door, but the owners wisely activated Plan B (Nov. 30, 2009).

Nature, Problems, Water

How would you like your acqua alta? Well done? Medium rare?

November 25, 2010 7 Comments

I have often mentioned that predictions of high water in Venice turn out to be as accurate as weather predictions anywhere else. Sometimes even less accurate, given how sensitive the whole lagoon situation is to all sorts of factors, including wind.

The reality of acqua alta at a modest level is that it doesn't uniformly cover many streets. Here you see people going from dry to wet, then it will be back to dry again.

The last week or so has undoubtedly been rather trying for the dauntless Paolo Canestrelli, director of the Tide Center. Because while the Gazzettino, rightly or wrongly, published a series of articles that sounded fairly alarmist: “Feast of the Salute with your hipboots,” “Feast of the Salute with no walkways,” “F of the S at 120 cm [four feet] of high water,” and so on, it didn’t turn out quite that way.

These stories were irksome for a few reasons, none of which had to do with whether or not I had to put on my hipboots.

First, the area around the basilica of the Salute is much higher than the Piazza San Marco, therefore a tide prediction which sounds drastic in one place won’t be nearly so much so in another.

As you see here in via Garibaldi. The board as walkway is a great idea but only if it's long enough.

Second, so far this autumn few forecasts have turned out as given. The 120 cm repeatedly predicted for Sunday morning? We got 103 [3 feet].

The tide did finally manage to pull itself up to 122 cm, but that was at 12:10 Sunday night, when probably there weren’t many people or taxis or barges around to be inconvenienced.

A few nights later, the sirens sounded with two additional tones, signaling the probable arrival of 120-130 cm [4-5 feet] of water. Two tones means that we will have some water about halfway up the street outside our door. But in the end, our canal did no more than kiss the edge of the fondamenta. The fact that there was virtually no wind also helped.

Regardless of the height or non-height of the eventual water, articles dramatize that the city has “water on the ground” without specifying the depth — sometimes it can be two inches, but the term “high water” is usually used by the media to sound as if the levees have broken. And these articles never mention how much of Venice has water, making it sound as if the entire city were going under. Someone might be sufficiently original as to publish a story that says “Two tones means that up to 29 per cent of the city is under water,” but I have yet to see one that says “71 per cent of the city is bone dry.”

I realize that drama is entertaining, but why dramatize it at all? It’s not dramatic. It’s temporarily slightly tiresome, at a very low level on the Zwingle Slightly Tiresome Index. I’d rate it a 2, the same as hanging out the laundry.

This would qualify as a true annoyance. For some reason this delivery-person was put ashore at the wrong place, and now his way forward is completely blocked by the walkways. He must be thinking all sorts of thoughts just now. — This would qualify as a true annoyance. For some reason this delivery-person was put ashore at an ill-advised spot near San Marco, and now his way forward is completely blocked by the walkways. (They spread out in a long T-shape beyond the edge of this picture.) He has obviously recognized that his only option is to wait till the workmen make a break in the barrier, which will be soon, considering how far down the tide has already fallen.

Now let me turn a sympathetic eye on the indomitable Canestrelli at the Tide Center. Because no matter what prediction he gives — predictions which are always made according to information which has been scientifically gathered, even if journalists then recast them to sound like the last act of “Gotterdammerung” — people revile him. This is either because the prediction turned out to be accurate, and inconvenient, or because it wasn’t accurate, in which case people throw another armload of brickbats at him.

This is regrettable because the Center has just recently created a new mathematical model which has attained notably higher precision — an accomplishment for which Canestrelli was recently awarded a prize by the Italian government. No rude remarks, thank you.

But nature resists our assumptions, as Canestrelli is the first to admit. “Look at the disastrous rainfall on the Veneto on November 1,” he told the Gazzettino on November 11; “it turned out to be ten times more than what was predicted. Unfortunately, even with progress, there is still a wide margin of error.”

In the case of the high water on November 10, he explained that “On Thursday our models didn’t predict anything over 100 cm. Only in the early morning [Friday, November 10] did we see indications that it might be higher, so we activated the sirens to warn it might reach 110 cm. We then raised the forecast to 115 cm. But unfortunately high water, like other weather phenomena, is very hard to predict even if you’re continually monitoring it.”

That particular series of unpredicted events was caused by a number of factors which aren’t taken into account in the simplistic popular impression of the Tide Center’s skills. “Even though the weather was improving,” Canestrelli continued, “there was the return of a seiche wave in the Adriatic” [the public, including me, isn’t very good at keeping track of the seiche waves out there], “a significant rise in the barometric pressure, and a drop in the wind.

“This was a very strange situation in that the increase in pressure didn’t blunt the tide; in my 30 years here I’ve only seen that happen once or twice. The problem is that the pressure, in spite of the increase of 10 millibars, remained at an extremely low level rarely seen in our latitudes.”

Technically one could say there was still acqua alta at the Piazza San Marco but it has obviously begun to subside.

All this gives the tiniest indication of how many different and mutating factors affect the height of the tide and the accuracy of the forecasts. Now let’s move on to another element which is much easier to grasp: Money and manpower.

“What can we do?” he asks more or less rhetorically. “Few departments are as indispensible as the Tide Center, but we risk sinking to the bottom.

True, just on the other side of the walkways, there is still water in the Piazza. Evidently the person with the big bag isn't too worried about its contents, or about waiting ten minutes.But it is not spectacularly high, and obviously it's on it way out. — True, just on the other side of the walkways there is still water in the Piazza. Evidently the person with the big bag isn't too worried about its contents, or about waiting ten minutes. It's obviously on its way out.

“For 2010, the budget is for one million euros. But 46,000 euros are for operating costs, and another 500,000 — allocated, but so far never actually seen — are earmarked for the maintenance of the equipment.

“How can we keep going with funding like this? The money that remains is all we have to give to the personnel, who are on call 24 hours a day.

“How can it be that a department which is crucial to the well-being of an entire city isn’t regarded as the apple of the eye of the emergency services? There was a time when we had all the interest we needed to guarantee efficiency and accuracy. Now times have changed.

At 9:20 this shop in the Piazza San Marco had water on its floor, an event for which, judging by the paving, it has been well prepared. The shop is supposed to open in ten minutes and you can see how agitated the owner and staff are. They're not even here yet.

“Furthermore,” Canestrelli goes on, “we risk reaching the limit of our capacity. Up until last year the Center had 17 employees; now we have 13 and those include people in administration and motor-launch drivers. This leaves very few who are involved in the forecast service. With this level of personnel, during the high-water season of October till May, we can’t monitor the situation 24 hours a day.”

And a note that is drowned-out in the chaotic chorus of who needs to know how high the water’s going to be is from the so-called ecological workers. Not so much for collecting the trash, which they overlook on high-water days, but because they have to know — in advance, please — whether they’re going to need to muster the troops to set up the passarelle, or temporary walkways. Preferably before the water is above the ankles.

The clever thing to do, it would seem to me, would be for the Tide Center to estimate the tide toward the higher end of the scale. Just to be on the safe side. I was very proud of myself for coming up with this clever and amusing idea.

Then Canestrelli told the Gazzettino that that’s pretty much what they’re doing.

So all this being said, let us dial down the volume on the wails preceding the next expected high tide. It may turn out to be a little — or somewhat — or a lot — different than you thought it was going to be. I suggest you buy a pair of boots and get on with your life.

Events, Problems, Water

Acqua alta? Real floods create real problems

November 16, 2010 6 Comments

The big water event in the Veneto region in November has had nothing to do with Venice and high water and the temporary walkways and how inconvenient or amusing the tourists find it and how aggravating it is for the merchants to deal with some water on the floor for a few hours.

Part of downtown Vicenza, a part of the world which is not accustomed to seeing water in its streets. — A scene of downtown Vicenza, a city which, unlike Venice, is not accustomed to seeing water in its streets. (Photo: Stampalibera.com)

The real story, which is still unfolding in all its drama and grief, has been the catastrophic flooding in large areas of the region caused by diluvial rains and overflowing rivers.

I mention this as part of my modest personal crusade to give acqua alta some useful context for people beyond the old Bel Paese who read the endless and fairly repetitive articles on Venice. I’d like to provide some recent perspective on the subject of water in these parts.

On November 1 the sky fell on the Veneto region. I actually can’t remember whether we got acqua alta in Venice — if we did it couldn’t have been a problem. But what happened out beyond the shoreline showed, at least to me, that anyone living near a river is going to be facing bigger and uglier problems than anybody does in Venice when the tide comes in.

The town of Caldogno has declared 80,000,000 euros in damage. (Photo: Stampalibera.com)

Areas in or near Vicenza, Padova, Treviso, the mountains of Belluno and the countryside around Verona have been declared disaster areas. In a 48-hour period 23 inches of rain fell on Belluno, 21 inches on Vicenza, 15 inches on Verona, 14 inches on Treviso. Roughly the amount that falls in a normal year.

The total damage to houses, property, municipal infrastructure and agriculture in the Veneto has been estimated (this will undoubtedly increase) at over one billion euros ($1,365,530,000).

Garbage: Many of the Veneto’s 200 km (124 miles) of beaches, usually covered by vacationing Germans and other families, are now covered by seven million tons of garbage deposited by the swollen rivers emptying into the Adriatic. By “garbage” I don’t just mean bags of coffee grounds and orange peel but plastic of every sort, sheets of metal, uprooted trees.

Experts meeting in Treviso are trying to figure out not only how to remove this amount of material, but how the sam hill to pay for getting rid of it, seeing that this type of trash costs between 170 and 180 euros ($232 – $245) per ton to destroy. I’ll help you out: That comes to more than one and a half billion dollars just for the garbage. I’ll send them a contribution but it probably wouldn’t pay for destroying more than a shopping-bag’s worth of detritus.

Mudslides: That amount of rain has drastically undermined the character of the land in many places. Cleaning up and consolidating the areas of mudslides is another entire problem which will cost an amount of money I’m not going to bother calculating.

Businesses: On their knees. Loss of merchandise, damage to buildings and interruptions in transport have immobilized many businesses. Parts of many roads are still under water.

A scene of the countryside outside Vicenza, where traffic has ceased to function. — A scene of the countryside outside Vicenza, where we see that traffic has run out of road.

Agriculture: Fields and crops destroyed. Some 500 farming operations are now at risk of going out of business. The government has estimated the damage at 25 million euros ($34,138,250).

I realize that you can replant sugar beets and chardonnay grapes but you can’t replant the Doge’s Palace, should water ever inflict comparable damage on this incomparable monument. But still.

Very recently, but before all this happened, Giorgio Orsoni, the mayor of Venice, took a trip to Rome to make the rounds of government ministers and rattle the tin cup. He didn’t come back with much, and now the future will inevitably be even more austere. It’s not hard to picture how urgent it’s going to seem to preserve a couple of palaces and churches to a government struggling to help an estimated 500,000 people get their lives back.

These are the most recent figures on the damage, which probably need no translation. The numbers will undoubtedly rise. Among other items is the damage to the Prosecco vineyards, so don't expect an excess of this delicacy next year.