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Venice’s San Marco Square remained underwater today due to a tide due to bad weather conditions, and the new system of mobile artificial dams was not activated, world agencies reported, cited by BTA.
Residents of the Italian city had to wear rubber boots due to the rising water level to 1.37 meters above sea level in the late afternoon.
The tidal wave flooded St. Mark’s Square and the floor of the cathedral of the same name, as well as the sidewalks along some canals. According to the church guard, the situation is dramatic. The guard said the porch was completely flooded.
Having learned from past experience, some traders had placed boards in front of their store doors to prevent water from entering the premises. At the beginning of October, Venice used its artificial dikes for the first time, designed against the phenomenon of “high tide”.
The Moses project is a complex engineering system that allows waterproofing thanks to 78 dikes placed at the entrance points of the lagoon. It is a network of caissons filled with water, which must be able to be raised in 30 minutes to create a barrier that can withstand a rise in water up to 3 meters above normal.
Today, the protection system was not activated, as wrong forecasts predicted a rise in water to only 1.20 meters above sea level. The wind from the Adriatic Sea unexpectedly intensified, explained the mayor of Venice, Luigi Bruniaro, to the Italian agency Aji. To activate the levees, a more substantial forecast is needed. We will have to review the operating regulations of the command post, stressed the mayor.
On November 12, 2019, the water reached 1.87 meters above sea level, one of the largest increases in history. Dozens of churches in the city, included in the World Heritage List, have been damaged. St. Mark’s Square is the lowest place in Venice. It is located one meter above sea level. Some Venetian neighborhoods are higher up and are not affected by “high tide”. Bad weather warnings have been issued throughout Italy, which could last until Sunday. The administrative region of northeastern Veneto was the hardest hit, with landslides reported in the mountains, in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, in Emilia-Romagna, in southern Campania and on the island of Sicily. Torrential rains, accompanied by hurricane-force winds, hit the central and southern Apennines, where there are spills and floods. In the northern regions, it snows at an altitude of 600 to 800 meters. The highest “red” alert code was announced today in the capital region of Lazio and the level of the Tiber River is being monitored.
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