• Venice, the Squero of San Trovaso loses the axes of the gondolas: "Help us to recover them"
  • Venice. The tide comes down, Piazza San Marco reopens. The Basilica and Palazzo Ducale remain closed
  • Venice, the solidarity number 45500 is active

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16 November 2019 High water for the whole weekend in Venice. The tide center of the Municipality has made it known that the water level in the city will still remain for some time with high values. At 11.55 am 115 cm peak. Tomorrow is expected to peak at 145 centimeters at 12.30 tomorrow. While for Monday the maximum value is 105 centimeters at 3.15, the minimum with 20 at 21.40.

Mayor Brugnaro: "A billion damages, immediately serve the Mose and not enough"
Luigi Brugnaro, mayor of Venice, will have to manage the emergency. "Yes, Zaia has specifically asked for it. It is the first time that the office of government commissioner is assigned to a mayor," replies the mayor in an interview with the Messenger. One billion euros is the estimate of the damages but, "when everything is dry - continues Brugnaro - it will be possible to understand precisely the damage caused by the salsa water to homes, businesses, shops, cultural and artistic heritage". From the Government "there will be a first allocation of 20 million euros to manage the emergency and restart the functionality of the city - reads the interview - The electric cabins, the piers, the pontoons. And if they were not enough, both premier Giuseppe Conte that the minister Paola De Micheli and the head of the Civil Protection Angelo Borrelli promised me further allocations ". No catwalks, indeed, politicians "should be thanked for coming in person to realize the damage caused by the tide and the wind - says the mayor - And first of all I thank the President of the Republic".

Costa: "Mose is not enough, Venice is as fragile as that of other Italian cities"
"Before talking about Venice, I must mention Gallipoli, Matera, the Abruzzo coast. Swept by storm surges or flooded with rivers of mud. Before talking about the particular, that is, we must talk about the general: 79% of the Italian territory is fragile for hydro-geological disruption. Even for Venice, we must anchor the discourse to this structural fragility of our country, and I have to repeat a speech heard a thousand times: the more we invest in prevention, the less we will have to resort to civil protection. that the speech is heard perhaps since the foundation of the Republic, but this is the state of the art ". Thus Environment Minister Sergio Costa in an interview with the Press.

Engineer Scotti, Mose: "Activating it would have been madness, it is not finished"
Activating the Mose to stop the high water in Venice "would have been an act of pure unconsciousness". The engineer Alberto Scotti, who calls himself "more than his father, the grandfather of the Mose" explains it in an interview with Repubblica: "You have to take it off your head, the Moses cannot yet protect Venice because it is not finished. It would have been like driving a Ferrari without the brakes. Technically it was possible to lift the barriers, but then we would not have been able to follow the tide, because the plants are not ready ", says the engineer. "To raise them in half an hour, as will happen when the Moses is up and running, three compressors are needed. To date we have only one. It would have taken five hours, it made no sense." What did you risk? "The flooding of the tunnels where the technicians are working. Without testing, and with only one compressor, the sea would have passed over the sluice gates". In short, "the decision was very painful. Do not believe that I and the two commissioners of the Consortium do not feel this responsibility on us. But in those conditions it would have been madness."

"The Mose can be operated only when the water reaches a certain level, around 80-90 cm. It cannot and must not be done before. And anyway if we had closed the mouths of the Lido and Chioggia, leaving that open of Malamocco where the trial test showed anomalous vibrations in the pipes, little would have changed: perhaps ten centimeters of water less than the 187 that have taken place "." I understand the need for politics, because the population is exhausted, but the Mose cannot yet be operated safely, "says Scotti. "At the time of Giovanni Mazzacurati, the Consortium disseminated timelines completely impossible to respect. Now we have a realistic delivery date: December 31, 2021. This time we will make it".

Franceschini: "Send SMS to 45500 to help the city"
"I spoke with the head of the Civil Protection Angelo Borrelli, the number 45500 has already been activated to make donations via SMS for the recovery of the cultural heritage of Venice. The whole world loves this beautiful city, let it show now". This was declared by the Minister for Cultural Heritage and Activities and for Tourism, Dario Franceschini. The solidarity number is active from today for the duration of 30 days. Through the telephone operators who have joined the initiative promoted by the Department for Civil Protection it will be possible to donate two euros by sending a solidarity SMS or making a call from a landline to 45500. The funds raised will be transferred by the operators, without any charge, to the Department of Civil Protection.