Venetian Problems

Carnival for everybody else

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Monday night looked sort of like this, except that the water was much higher and there was more snow, which was lifted up in large undulating slabs like polar icepack. But this is just our little corner of the universe. Multiply all this by quadrillions and you can imagine the Piazza San Marco. Still, the real problems weren’t where there was water, but where there was snow. And ice. And so forth.

You know the old saying: “Expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed.”  (Is that an old saying, or did I just make it up?)

Following that bit of wisdom gave me a Carnival which was modest to the point of self-abnegation.  With lots of fritole.  The only unpleasantness was the acqua alta, but it did not reach the predicted epic proportions. (In fact, let the record show that one positive aspect of the imminent threat of water in the house is that, when all the stuff was piled on our two pieces of furniture, I cleaned and washed and dusted objects and places which hadn’t seen the hand of man since we moved in.) We had no plans or projects or desires or dreams or anything which could have been frustrated or ruined. And we didn’t lose power.

Reading the rundown in yesterday’s Gazzettino, though, I get a picture of a Carnival which for lots of other people — most of whom had needs far surpassing ours, primarily to travel in some way or to some degree in the culminating days –should have been called, not “Live in Color,” but “Going to Hell in Color.”

If you wanted to come to Venice on Monday night, with or without an expensive costume — or more to the point, if you really wanted to leave Venice on Monday night — you’d have found yourself involved in a sort of Ironman Triathlon: Riding the Train/Bus, Crossing the Square, and Finding Your Way Home in the Dark.

I could write a long post full of details, and I’ll keep the paper for a few days in case anybody asks me for more information.

But the headlines howling from a few pages of the paper tell enough. The thing to keep in mind is that island Venice covers some three square miles; mainland Venice covers some 21 square miles (Mestre is 8 square miles, Marghera is 13 square miles). It’s not Mexico City.  It’s not even Hampton, Connecticut.

Translation: How hard could it be to clear away some snow and keep the buses and trains running?

Answer: Hard.  Very hard.  Harder than building the Eupalinian aqueduct. Especially since it appears that nobody believed this storm was really going to hit.

There is a rundown in the paper of how many squads were working, and how many snowplows and salt trucks.  Unfortunately, they must have been phantoms; hardly anyone seems to have seen either them or evidence of their passage. In fairness, I note that there were people out working to deal with it all. Not enough, but some.

The second thing to keep in mind is that this large and violent storm, with snow and high water thrown in at no extra cost, was forecast for at least three days.  And it had already hit the west coast of Italy, and much of the south.  In other words, it wasn’t some bizarre anomaly which struck without warning.

In the order in which they appear, starting on page one of the local section (translated by me):

Under the snow, the inefficiency of the Veneto.  The prefect calls in the chiefs of public transport.  Consumers resort to the Procura (that is, the court. The prefect is the local representative of the President of the Republic, and pretty much outranks everybody.)

The precipitation caught just about everybody unprepared, from the Comune of Venice to the trains and at the airport. There were photos of people deplaning and struggling across the slippery slush covering the tarmac to get to the terminal. The baggage handling system went haywire. And so on.

There were blackouts all over the place, including the train stations in Venice and in Mestre. Not only tourists, but lots of commuters were either stranded or left to wait indefinitely for trains that were late, late, and late.

SNOW PLAN, everything has to be redone. If you read the whole article, you’ll ask yourself what they think “plan” might mean, when you consider how it worked out. The plan is ten years old, for what that’s worth.  And why, you ask, does the municipality keep a plan that has to be dusted every year because it’s never used until it’s useless?

Acqua alta, a night of terror.  The wind saves Venice and Chioggia. As previously noted by me, but without the “terror” part, at least in our little hovel.

Bad weather freezes the arrivals; Fat Tuesday for 60,000. This would only concern people with something to sell, because it’s less than half of the numbers which were expected.  Having fewer people around was the only good news I can see for emergency crews or any other group which had to contend with the breakdown of the plan.  I mean “plan.”

Transport chaos: the prefect isn’t having it. Ca’ Corner (headquarters of the prefect) retorts to the accusations of the transport people and wants to shed light on the reasons for the inconveniences (meaning no excuses).

“Crushed in the few buses which left Piazzale Roma.”  Needs no explanation except why there were so few buses, something the prefect also will be wanting to know. But remember that the buses to the mainland are operated by the ACTV, which has shown such impressive skill in managing transport by vaporetto.

Burano: Blackout on an island which finished under water — volunteers at work the entire night. High water doesn’t affect only Venice, when you stop to think about it.  The people on the islands have to get out the mops too.  In this case, they had to do it in the dark.  Fun.

Between water and blocks of ice; the fear finishes at midnight.  Bridges and streets slippery, people walking with tall boots alarmed (the people, not the boots) by the prediction of 160 cm.  Merchants on alert.  Nobody could help that there were blocks of ice floating around, which actually were more like heavy slushy shards; the street outside our door looked like the polar sea in spring, and so did the Piazza San Marco. Unlike the last acqua alta, there were no bare-chested tourists frolicking blithely in the gelid waist-deep water.

On the Giudecca, fondamente in the dark because the electricity was out.

Chemical toilets (port-a-potties) adrift in campo San Polo. Wow….

A storm of protests; the snow plan has to change.  The Comune demonstrates the efforts made to deal with Monday’s weather emergency, but even City Hall admits that in the future it will be necessary to do much more. Brains on fire! Smoke coming out of their ears!

No buses at the hospital (in Mestre); the employees forced to sleep in the hospital. 

And so on, and on, and on.

There are 220,000 Scouts in Italy; surely somebody in the Comune must have been a Scout at some time.  But “Be Prepared” seems to have been replaced by “Let’s just hope for the best.” 

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Venetian Events

The Carnival of the Weather

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At certain moments even the sky began to dress itself up. This little costume was delivered by a ferocious northeast wind.
The same moment as the picture above, but looking sunset-ward. To give you an idea of how strong the wind was,  you should know that those mountains silhouetted in the center of the scene are the Euganean Hills, 30 miles away.

I haven’t communicated in a bit because I was waiting for Carnival to end (midnight last night, as everyone knows) so I could sort through the rubble and look for something to report.

Judging by the mass of photographs clogging my computer, I evidently found plenty to chronicle, but mainly within the confines of our little lobe of Venice. We didn’t go the Piazza San Marco even once; the revelers aboard the vaporettos were enough for me.

Every year, the organizers of this event form it around a particular theme, something they hope will be irresistible.  This year’s title was “Live in Color,” but I can tell you that it ought to have been called “Drenched in Color,” or “Freezing in Color.” Or “Sloshing in Color.”  The colors mainly being the blue of your bloodless fingers and the gray of your bloodless lips.

This year’s carnival was all about weather. In the space of the festivities (Jan. 26-Feb. 12), we got rain, wind, snow, and acqua alta.  Sometimes together, sometimes separately. Several keystone events had to be reshuffled (one good reason to extend Carnival — this year, it was 18 days) not only because there wouldn’t have been any spectators, but because in some cases it would have been dangerous for the performers.

It didn’t matter to me because I hadn’t spent thousands of dollars making or renting a fabulous costume whose purpose in life was for me to wear it where people could see it and admire it and envy me.  There are many people — primarily French — who spend months planning and preparing their appearance (not to the extent of the samba schools of Rio, but still).  I hope they’ve taken home some beautiful memory.

The open salvo didn’t exactly make you want to dance: A headline at the start of Carnival announced that the President of the Province of Venice (bigger than the municipal area) had declared that she was banning confetti/coriandoli that would naturally be strewn festively by and among partyers in the main piazza of a town called San Dona’ di Piave. Why? Because “It makes a mess.” That’s the point! If there were any time in the year when it would be laudable to focus on civic hygiene, I’d say that Carnival isn’t it. But maybe this is her way of saying “We only have ten garbage collectors this month, please don’t give them more work to do.”  Or, based on my experience in this neighborhood, don’t give them any work to do.

Here is a look at Carnival in ErlaWorld: 

Our first clue that something out of the ordinary was on the way was the work that went on one morning to fill in the depressions in the long gravelly walkway toward the lagoon known as the “Viale Garibaldi.” Being as heavily traveled as Grand Central Terminal by people going to and from the Giardini vaporetto stop means that it has long since been worn down into assorted shallows. These weren’t so apparent in dry weather, but when it rained, we called this stretch of Venice “Bacan’,” after our favorite lagoon mudbank. You could see the same rises and depressions in the ground, interspersed with pools of water. This particular patch became a lake. Great work! Whatever came over them? Did somebody suddenly find thousands of euros that had fallen between the cushions of the sofa?
Then the kids, the dogs, and the confetti began to come out into the sunshine. (Yes, the sun did shine occasionally. Just enough to make you miss it when the next wave of weather passed over us.)
A little executioner out for a stroll with his grandfather, looking for someone to dispatch.
Kids get started early in the dressing-up game — not that they need any help or encouragement.
We had noticed a stage and small soccer area being set up over the course of two days, and a crowd gathered to see the first match of a new Carnival diversion called the “Palio dei Sestieri,” roughly the Trophy of the Sestieri, which are the six districts of Venice. The teams were made up of boys organized in teams of increasing age over a few days, and they played “calcetto.” It’s regular soccer, but with only five players, not eleven, per team. For the record, at the end of the series our very own sestiere, Castello, took home the victors’ cup. Coincidence? I really hope so.
Excellent block by the goalkeeper of the Dorsoduro team. I can tell you that hurling himself to the ground to intercept the ball wasn’t any fun on the granite paving stones. But all the goalkeepers did it. Bruises. Contusions. Fun.
And of course there was a half-time show, to music.
At the next break, another show, this time with smaller dancers and big pompoms. Go Big Red!
One morning around 9:30 I got on the #1 vaporetto heading uptown. At the Arsenale stop, several exceptional Beings boarded, going (I thought) to San Marco to display themselves. All normal so far, except that one Being was wearing wings with plumes, which stretched out as far as her/his arm on each side. (There is a person in there, between the wings.) Needless to say, this occupied an amazing amount of space which nobody else could use. I’m accustomed to luggage taking up square yards of space, but it’s not often a costume is so big that it probably ought to pay for an extra ticket. Every time he/she turned around, people stood back.
This very impressive quartet got off at the train station. Maybe they had to catch a train back to Brigadoon. They are a good example of the people who give Carnival everything they’ve got, though I didn’t hear what language they were speaking. Maybe when you’re dressed like this, speaking is superfluous.
Last Sunday morning saw the traditional (by now) regata in costume organized by the Settemari club. These were the two front-runners, as they sped past us approaching the Rialto Bridge.
My friend, Antonella Mainardi, rowing like mad as Her Britannic Majesty, led by her faithful corgi, steered by her faithful prince. The backwash from a passing vaporetto created a brief challenge to her nearest competitors, a pair from the Giudecca rowing club decked out as a pair from the Giudecca rowing club. No points for creativity there.
And on they sped, providing a highly wrought spectacle for the gondola hordes. And the gondoliers, too.
Monday, the next-to-last day of Carnival, we got mega-weather. But it wasn’t yet up to speed in the mid-afternoon, when these  intrepid revelers headed out to find some frivolity somewhere. Snow means nothing when you’ve only got 48 hours left to party.
It snowed all day, gradually intensifying, with a northeast wind that blew up to 30 mph (50 km/h). That’s why all the snow is sticking to the east parapet of this bridge; the other side was completely clear.
The slick packed slush on our bridge was inviting anyone who crossed to slip and fall and break something.
Via Garibaldi looked like the Great White Way. Amazing how hard it is to walk on deepening wet snow, even if you do have the wind at your back. The return was even more amusing.
Garibaldi on his pedestal, unimpressed, unimpressible.  Perhaps nobody had yet advised him that the Tide Center was predicting an exceptional acqua alta tonight: 160 cm.  Of course, why would he care?  He lives on the third floor.
We, sad to say, do not. We live on the ground floor, and while we are high enough to stay dry with a tide that reaches 150 cm, after that, it’s all hands to man the pumps. Or to be more precise, put all our belonging up on something. Here, the contents of a few bookshelves and God knows what else are up on the sofa, and sofa is up on two plastic storage boxes, and if the storage boxes get wet, they’re on their own.
And everything at high-tide-level in the bedroom was up on the bed, including whatever was on the closet floor, and the lowest drawers of the three bureaus. High water: Romantic? Dangerous? I’m going with “damned nuisance.”
But we had no worries about the appliances, having learned several years ago that when the water comes in, it makes itself comfortable everywhere. So we had exerted ourselves a year ago to take  measures to protect them from dampage.
But we were reprieved! The next morning the world was smiling again. The wind had changed direction when the tide turned (signaled by a single thunderclap), and the water only came up to 143 cm. However, we had to stay up till 12:15 to know this. These high-water vigils only seem to take place in the dead of night. Waiting for the water to turn around and go out is like sitting by somebody’s bedside listening to them breathe.
I’m glad somebody had a good time last night. I discovered these relics not long before the slowly warming morning returned them to their primal element.
And toward the shank of the afternoon on Fat Tuesday, we headed out — like a few hundred other savvy neighborhood people — to feast on the free fritole and galani offered by the Calafati.

Here they are, in all their glory: The feeders of the five thousand. Full disclosure — I am a member of this august society, but I do not presume to man the deep-fat fryers. It seems to make them happy enough for me to come and make a fool of myself eating.
Lino Penzo, who is also president of the Remiera Casteo, has no scruples about feeding my addiction. “Here — knock yourself out,” he didn’t bother saying. I took them, and I did. They were great.
The man in the red jacket, front and center, is Dino Righetto, the creator of all these fritole. He made 700 of these little suckers, and they’re so light and fragrant you couldn’t believe that what they sell in the shops would have the courage to call themselves fritole.
I wasn’t the only one scarfing up the fat and sugar.
There was plenty to do between snacks — like pour confetti over your friends.
Or play hide-and-seek with your friends, who seem at the moment to have hidden themselves so completely she’ll never find them.
Carnival doesn’t always have to be about masks and garb. Why not just grab a soft plastic hammer that squeaks on impact, and go around bopping people with it?
This little sprite has one of the best costumes ever, showing (yet again) that you don’t need square miles of tulle and sequins and paint to show that you are a fantasy creature. She’s like a sketch by Picasso: A couple of quick lines and there you are: Carnival!
Then again, why waste precious time getting dressed up when the fritole are still warm?

While we were all scarfing and laughing, the hardy trinket-sellers were packing up the Carnival masks for another year. I never saw anything that said “The party’s over” quite the way the sight of the boxes of masks did.
And stealthily the afternoon departed — the light drifted upward, the dew began to fall, everybody was pretty much played out. That was Mardi Gras on via Garibaldi. It’s totally good enough for me.
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Acqua Alta

Why blame anybody?

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The peak tide forecast for last night at 11:20 PM was 130 cm.

At around 8:30 we heard the siren, with three tones.  Not a happy sound, but one that does not portend water in our house.

About an hour later, sirens again, with four tones.  Not happy at all, though we still have a chance of staying dry. Evidently the scirocco had gotten stronger.  In fact, we could (as usual in these cases) hear it making its customary deep roar out along the Lido’s Adriatic beaches.

At 10:00 PM, a look out the window revealed water ambling inland.  It had just gone past our first step, which is fine because as long as it’s moving forward it’s not moving upward (at least, not much).

At 10:30 PM, another look showed that the water wasn’t ambling inland anymore.  It was just sitting there, with a few little ripples here and there. And no longer did we hear the wind roaring, which meant the wind had either dropped or changed direction.

Reprieved!  Because the fact that the tide was due to turn in less than an hour (an imprecise prediction, but that’s what we were going by) meant that at 10:30 the tide was already entering the phase known to us as “stanca,” or “tired.”  Slowing down.  Losing headway. Coasting in neutral.  However you want to think of it.

Therefore the tide wouldn’t be rising much more, if at all, before it began to go out.

At 11:00 PM, the tide was visibly receding.  Early!  I’ll take it!

So, instead of getting water nearly up to our top step, as per the warning sirens, it didn’t even make it halfway up the first step.  My guess is that it would have been a two-siren height, at best.

The traditional conundrum: Which is worse?  When the Tide Center’s prediction turns out to be right?  Or when it’s wrong?

If you saw this, would your first instinct be to call some city office to find out if it might be going to rain?

I haven’t read today’s newspaper’s account of all this because they become pretty monotonous. One truly monotonous component is the assortment of complaints from people about how inaccurate the forecast was, and the weary reply from the Tide Center that with the few coins a year they’re allotted as financing, it’s a wonder they get anything done at all.

I’d like to add another viewpoint in support of the Tide Center, run by the exemplary Paolo Canestrelli, who has been dealing with this for decades.  (I would bet money that when he retires — the prospect of which must be the one thing that keeps him going — he is going to go live in a yurt on the steppes of Outer Mongolia.)

Here is my viewpoint: Why cast blame on the Tide Center? It was established in the early Seventies in order to alert the city to possible exceptional high tides — a decision clearly inspired by the Infamous Acqua Alta (IAA, to me) of 1966.

But there had been plenty of high waters up until then. Venetians had grown up with it, and most of them could recognize the signs of impending high water. They didn’t need a siren to tell them what was going on.

Or did they?

I said “most of them.” Lino’s brother-in-law, Roberto, for some reason, seems to have been born government-tropic, leaning instinctively toward what officials say and not what his eyes transmitted to his very own brain.  This was unfortunate, because Roberto lived on the ground floor below Lino’s apartment.

Lino remembers that on that fateful November 4 there had been heavy weather all day (wind, higher-than-usual tide, all the usual markers).  He knew when the tide was supposed to turn, therefore he noticed immediately that it had not, in fact, turned.  Which meant that six hours later, when it was supposed to rise again, it was going to begin rising from a much higher level than usual.

While he was evaluating all this, he looked up at the cable (phone? electricity?) strung high up across his street.  He saw a rat running along it.

That’s when he knew it was time to start preparing for serious water.

So he went to his brother-in-law and said, “Hey Roberto, we’re in for really high water — we’ve skipped a tide turn and the water’s not going down.  I’ll help you get your furniture upstairs.”

To which Roberto replied, “No no, nothing’s going to happen.  The city (I don’t know what office that would have been back then) says that blah blah we’re going to be okay blah blah.”

To which Lino said, “Listen, it’s not looking good AT ALL.  I will help you carry your things upstairs!  Let’s get on it!”

To which Robert replied, “No no, blah blah they said nothing’s going to happen blah blah.”

To which Lino replied, “Suit yourself.”

And so, two days later, Roberto had to throw out virtually all of his furniture, which was so full of lagoon water it would never be usable again.

I wasn’t there, but I knew him years after this event, and he was still not the type to say, “Boy, did I ever screw up.  Why didn’t I listen to you?”  He was the type, of which there is now an over-supply, who would have blamed the city for having erred in its prediction.

It strikes me that people nowadays have come to use the Tide Center as a crutch.  By which I don’t mean everybody should take a course in meteorology, or that the Tide Center is incompetent, because it isn’t.

What I mean is that there are too many variables in the weather (such as the wind suddenly dropping) for the Tide Center to keep up with, minute by minute, to ensure that every single person in Venice is going to know, every single minute, what to do.

There was a life before the Tide Center, and when there was acqua alta most people  were well aware it was on the way.  When Lino was a boy, people didn’t even wear rubber boots. Who had money to spend on boots?  You went barefoot, as I occasionally have done.

Now there’s a Tide Center, and instead of helping people act more intelligently (its fundamental purpose), its mere existence seems to have given people an excuse to behave like quivering bewildered rabbits.

The Tide Center isn’t there to save you, people.  Only you can do that.

If the Tide Center is predicting high water, why do so many people put their garbage bags out on the street? Does that mean they don’t believe the forecast? Or do they just not care? If they don’t care, then I think that pretty much closes the discussion on how distressing acqua alta is.  This event was December 1, 2008, but nothing has changed except the varying heights of the water.
This is a man willing to brave the ferocity of the elements to get the serum through to Nome. Sorry, I mean to get the boots somewhere to people who are evidently stranded. Funny thing is, by the time he gets home and they get the boots on, the water will be gone.
These people are dangerously irresponsible. Don’t they know they’re supposed to be frantic with worry and indignation?

 

 

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Acqua Alta

The water missed the exit

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The acqua alta which was anticipated for this morning at 9:40 — and which was announced with the necessary and appropriate siren plus three tones at 6:15 — didn’t make it ashore.

That is to say, I imagine there was some H20 in the Piazza San Marco, but the maximum height the water reached was 103 cm above sea level, not the expected 130.

I felt I ought to report on this, to reassure anyone who might have thought I’d be shifting furniture at dawn, but even more to reassure people that weather forecasts here can be just as imprecise as anywhere.  If that’s reassuring.

Faithful reader Debi Connor asked for pictures, so here goes.  I know that this is not the scene she expected.  It’s not the scene I expected either, but it’s a lovely thing to behold.

The water at the edge of our street, at 9:50 AM.
And the street across the canal. All quiet on the high-water front, at least in our neighborhood.

There is another high-water alert on for the next peak tide, tonight near midnight.  Naturally we will be paying attention.

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