After the great Flood in Venice are assessed the damage, and the culprits wanted. The first one is easier and perhaps also more meaningful than the other. An example of the damage is what has made the water with the St. mark’s Basilica: The floor with the mosaics was flooded, in the crypt of the water more than a Meter high. Of course, the mosaic floor needs to be restored, piece by piece. Some of it will be beyond repair.
Much worse but the damage that the salt water caused the walls and pillars are. With the bearing Parts of this construction it is behaving like radiation damage, explains Mario Piana, of the for all of the restoration work, the architect responsible for the Church, the Italian press: First, a concerned look open yet quite ordinary. Then hair began, and teeth fail. Because the salt water penetrates into the masonry and the mortar, from which the walls and pillars are joined, it remains therein and is destroyed, slowly but surely, the strength of the material. Eventually, these components are no longer able to bear the loads that rest on them.
The destruction of Venice is part of the everyday life of this city
St. mark’s Basilica is only the most prominent buildings of Venice. What happens to him in the whole city, which was flooded in the night from Monday to Tuesday to more than four-fifths. The same destructive force is directed against the Ca’ Pesaro, against the Palazzo Gritti, against the former workers ‘ housing at the Arsenale. It is directed against everything that stands on the old oak piles in the mud of the lagoon.
This flood was so much more than just one of the many smaller and medium-sized Floods, which are looking for Venice every Winter home, and the, or each, are already destructive enough. It is no Exaggeration was, as the master Builder said in the Morning after the disaster, it was far from the Apocalypse is just a breath.
image range: high water in Venice
Where would add that the destruction of Venice in a such a Mass of the everyday life of this city, that there needs to be a extraordinary event to bring them into consciousness. Because the brick, which is basically the whole city is damaged by the high waves of the motor-powered boat traffic hits (as well as the associated vibrations), by the thousands and Thousands of water buses, barges, taxi boats, the hour-by-hour, day-to-day not to begin passing through the city, from the greatest of all Plagues, the cruise ships, in the first place.
The question of who is to blame has a core, this part, of all morality, a rational. Because there is not only a Plan, but also the construction of a building, with the Venice from extreme high water could be protected: To to more than ninety percent of the hydraulic dam that will be built in front of the three entrances to the interior lagoon to be made, it’s ready. However, He is not not completed, it is ready for operation, and this fact is now of the anger of inhabitants, such as the Italian Public.
53 years for the construction of a dam
the planning for this building was started in the year 1966, soon after the highest flood ever had plagued the city. It was designed in the eighties, the first Works were carried out in 2003, and at the latest in 2016, it should go into operation. It was not to be, especially because the dam of a regional Elite of politicians and business served people for personal gain.
Now a little more than two hundred million euros are missing to completion, whereupon the system could then meet in December 2021, their function. But even if now everywhere after a corresponding decision is called: It doesn’t exist yet. Instead, it was used with surprising speed for a Commissioner to oversee on behalf of the Italian government, the completion of construction.
For decades, gave it to the city, not politicians, would have actually made a sustainable decision to the preservation of the city , says Marco de Michelis, who taught as an expert on historic buildings at the University of architecture in Venice. In the result, Venice had become the subject of an infinite variety of private economic interests. I started this development with Massimo Cacciari, from 1993 to 2000 and again from 2005 until 2010 the mayor of the town, which was against the construction of the dam, but did nothing of his inability to have. And now?
views of the unfinished dam “Moses”, designed to protect Venice from Flooding. (14. November 2019) photo: Simone Padovani/
The hydraulic system, says Marco de Michelis, has long been a technique of the day before yesterday, so outdated. And seven billion euros, an absurdly high sum of the construction cost, we can in Germany, the ICE line from Nuremberg to Leipzig build. But there is no other choice to stay than to take the dam as quickly as possible, no matter what the cost it. In the ten or twenty years, during which the functioning of the system, then, could be something New and Better.
And Luigi Brugnaro, the President of the mayor? He recommends that the citizens of the city to document the damage to their respective property to be able to later claims for damages on the evidence. With this disposition, he ruled the city for four years, without Opposition, to contradict him, but always to the economic advantage, with little understanding of the cultural, historical, or even aesthetic uniqueness of Venice. Therefore, the helplessness in the face of the high-water and the Fort at the end of the depopulation of the city screams.
the city is Left because of the bakers and the fishmongers are disappearing because the residents can’t make it through the tour groups because there are no public places more, if every place of the pleasure of looking is invited, in short: will you leave, by creating a tourism infrastructure in the place of the fine tissue occurs, the the civil everyday life needs to sustain itself. The same business sense resulted in, first, that the Plan for the construction of the dam was taken and approved, and after that, he managed the construction of the ruins was that he is today.
the mayor is ready to Venice to give up
When the mayor of Venice, speaks now, it is climate change, which was responsible for the disaster, he seeks to make an instance liable, would not matters to be. A slowly rising sea level is not likely, however, pressed for a fraction of the consequences for the lagoon-term, such as those caused by Dredge and Widen the shipping channels in: If the Wind is blowing from the South-East, is becoming more and more water faster into the lagoon. In consequence, only the level does not rise. Rather, the flood takes longer and longer to abzuflie shot, because Yes, more and more water is suppressed.
At the same time, the mayor indicates that he is in the long term, ready to Venice to give up: Who could, as an individual politician, or as a single city, something against the climate change to business?
So cheap, you should let Luigi Brugnaro won’t get away. Venice is not only an Italian institution that would be dedicated to the curiosity of thirty million visitors per year. The city is a unique monument for a connection between the Church and Republic of Christianity, and reason, in the thousand years ago the foundations for a way of thinking which dominates today the whole world. And as all this weren’t amazing enough, Venice is also of an almost unreal beauty.
Created: 15.11.2019, 10:30 a.m.
