Flooding in Venice is Bad, but Also a Personal Moment for Venetians
As I walk the glossy grey streets holding my umbrella high and hoping the exercise class will still be held in the face of this deluge, the siren goes off. This loud, mournful, multi-tonal wail comes from the center of the city. It goes up and up, accenting the severity of the warning and the wail sounds like the cosmic jam from the spacecraft in the movie “Close Encounters.” In any other place, that siren would send the populace running for cover, wondering if the end was near. But in Venice, it announces acqua alta, the rising tide that begins to seep over the city as the water breeches the sides of canals and seeps up the drains along the streets. But the sound is also a community touchstone because it’s a familiar alert, and in that sense, the siren is reassuring rather than scary because it means someone is looking out for the city and its citizens.
More interesting, no locals panic during acqua alta; Venetians simply put on their well-worn unfashionable rubber boots and go on their way. Some stores move to put solid gates at the bottom of entry doors to keep out the water, and elevated sidewalks are set about in areas of greatest flooding so foot traffic never halts, even for a minute. Moored boats rise higher in the canals but every Venetian knows the water goes down with tide which means the flood won’t last long, no matter what the world press is announcing.
Acqua alta might be the oft-repeated wave of damaging water that is undermining Venice, but it is also a culturally intimate moment. As the rain comes down and the tide floods in, the tourists disappear, worried they will drown or melt and the city becomes elementally Venetian again. The remaining 40,00 or so citizens simply go about their daily routine starting with a stop for a coffee at their local bar, a place maybe a bit moist but never closed. At the bar, in small flooded streets and on the many bridges of Venice, citizens chat with neighbors and friends, unbothered by the rising tide and or the need for an umbrella, and for once uninterrupted by tourists demanding directions or attention. During these times, the elided Venetian dialect fills the air because it’s not diluted by other languages, Italian included. Historically, Venice has always come together over water, either trading across the seas or fishing in the Adriatic and here it is again, coming in on the tide.
As a long-term visitor to Venice, I know I will never really be Venetian. How could I be? But in the mornings when the sirens go off, I don’t go back home either. I, too, head for my usual bar, sit on a stool at a small table to have the best cafe latte in the world and listen to whatever music blares from the bar’s speakers. I also keep time with the music by tapping the water-splattered floor with my rubber-booted foot, happy to be here in what looks to others like a disaster but is somehow more like a cultural pause than a phenomenon of nature.
