Come......High Water

A boat on the wrong side of the wall.

I'd looked at photos of floods, watched movies with floods and seen floods on the news. Then one night a flood knocked at the door of my tiny yellow house with turquoise shutters and this time the photos, videos and news were about people and a place that I knew.

My house is on a long, thin island between the Venetian Lagoon and the Adriatic Sea.  At its narrowest it's 16 feet and at its widest, about a quarter of a mile. There are only two roads on the island, one by the sea and one by the lagoon. Colorful houses line the lagoon and face the sea, but most (like mine) are tucked in the tiny calli (lanes) between the two.

Storms on the island are always spectacular.  The residents congregate in the lagoon to watch the clouds roll in and the whitecaps grow.  As it gets colder and windier, most head back inside, but some of us don't give in until the first cold raindrops fall.

On November 12, 2019 I wasn't on the island for the storm. That night I received a video with waves sloshing over the low wall on the lagoon side, 30 steps from my front door.  The message said that everyone was on alert for acqua alta (high water). There were voices in the background on the video, but they didn't sound much different from what I usually hear at the beginning of a storm...oohs and aahs like spectators at  a good American fireworks display and a few ciaos from people pedaling past on their bikes to beat the rain. 

Acqua alta wasn't new on the island, but it hadn't been around for nearly two decades after pumps were installed to protect the island from seasonal high water. It took several years before the residents found the courage to store their emergency acqua alta panels in the attic.  That's where I found mine when I bought the house and for history's sake decided to use them as kitchen shelves.

The beginning of the eerie clean-up.

Shortly after receiving the first video, I got a message saying that no one had seen anything like it (which was alarming since many of the islanders are old enough to remember the flood of 1966).  Then came the video with waves pouring (instead of sloshing) over the wall and heading straight down my calle.

The videographer was my neighbor.  She's of the group that usually runs for cover before the first raindrops fall, so her videos were shot from her second floor window. Twenty-eight minutes after her first message she wrote that the water in our calle was one meter high (3 feet, 3 inches) and there was no electricity. Next came a photo with water as high as the bottom of my first floor window. There was nothing to do but wait in my safe, dry kitchen (a 90-minute drive and 20-minute boat ride away) while my friends on the island waited in their second floor bedrooms (because they no longer had safe, dry kitchens). 

The island skyline.

Some families spent the night bailing water out their windows while others tired and went upstairs to bed. Everyone knew the water would eventually recede but many worried about when it would rise again.  Acqua alta had always been a part of life on the island. This group was just out of practice.

For a few hours that night the island and lagoon had become one. Those that slept woke to bikes and upturned dumpsters floating past their doors and found boats where cars were once parked.  I was told to wait a day before making the trip because parts of the island were still under water.

Two days after the flood I shared  the ferryboat with a lot of new stoves, fridges and washing machines. When I arrived on the island I was greeted with somber yet resilient hellos from a population insistent on staying afloat instead of bailing out.

Several years ago I found a sunken boat washed up in the lagoon. I made it into a sofa. This time it didn't sink. It floated around my livingroom until the flood receded.