KEY POINTS:
Sea water powered by a fierce sirocco wind laid siege to Venice for a second day yesterday, flooding basements, destroying domestic appliances and shopkeepers' merchandise and bringing the city to a halt.
Tuesday's flood, which reached 1.56m, was the highest in 22 years. Yesterday the Piazza San Marco and much of the rest of the city were still under water, and sales of anglers' waders and gumboots continued to boom.
The fire brigade answered 135 emergency call-outs to help residents empty flooded cellars, to pump out stairwells and deal with chimney pots threatened by the strong wind. The city's government has appealed to the central Government for financial help to get through the crisis.
Venice awoke with the acqua alta (high-water) alarm ringing throughout the city, but winds were light and the flood was expected to be no higher than those which have inundated its centre no less than eight times since October 28. But the wind suddenly strengthened, the water poured in and reached the 1.56m mark.
Venetians, long used to the phenomenon, rushed down to their basements to remove valuables. Lisa di Cataldo, a pensioner, born and raised in Venice, who lives in the Castello section, said: "The water came up at great speed. It poured into the cellar and came within 20cm of knocking out our new boiler. It came in fast because the sirocco wind was so strong. The person who lives opposite had her fridge and television destroyed by the water.
"Everybody in the calle [lane] was busy cleaning up as the level began to drop; you have to go at it quickly because the salt water is so destructive. At the end of the calle there was a shop run by Indians who had all their merchandise out on the street. Not being Venetians, clearly they were not prepared for the force of the water."
Aggravating the situation was a strike by the crews of the vaporetti, the public ferries that keep the city moving.
If the plan to save the city from high water by floodgates, known as the Moses project, had been implemented according to schedule, this week's floods would never have happened, says Consorzio Venezia Nuova, the consortium building the gates.
The multibillion-euro project was supposed to finish last year, but delays in Government finance have pushed the completion date to 2014.
Di Cataldo said: "The Government has spent so much money on Moses ... they ought to have it finished by now."
Candus, whose home was unaffected, was phlegmatic about the flood.
"The media exaggerated the whole thing," he said.
"They called it a dramatic event, but there was nothing dramatic about it: the water just comes up then it goes down, that's all."
HOLDING THE WATERS AT BAY
* Venice is building a system of movable barriers that would rise from the seabed to ease the effect of high tides.
* The US$5.5 billion ($10.4 billion) scheme, known as the Moses project after the Biblical figure who parted the Red Sea, was originally meant to be finished last year but the completion date is now expected to be as late as 2014.
* Giancarlo Galan, the conservative governor of the surrounding Veneto region, has criticised Venice's centre-left administration for failing to prepare for the flood and for allegedly stonewalling the barrier system.
* The company building the barriers said that had the system been in place, the city would not have been flooded this week.
* This week's flooding, which reached 1.56m, was the worst in 22 years. The worst floods were on November 4, 1966, when the city was submerged by 1.94m of water.
- INDEPENDENT
