The Great Flood in Venice Brings Unique Problems

Heavy rains and storm surge from a low pressure system combined early this week to bring the fourth-worst flooding (from storm surge) that the water city Venice, Italy [WikiPedia] has ever seen. Water levels rose 5 feet. Here's a map of the city:

Now think about this a minute. A good portion of the city contains no guardrails or other protection (see pictures here) to keep a person from walking into the waterways that permeates the city, because boats pull up constantly to drop people off for transportation. Add 5 feet of murky water, and you could easily walk out of a building and drop into the canal, especially if you are a tourist not familiar with the area! The photos below show how they have mitigated this threat.

For one, they had to put up walkways to keep people's feet dry who would normally be walking on the "sidewalk" between the buildings and the canals. This also helps guide people around so they don't drop under water. You can see one of these below.

The second line of protection was red and white "police tape" which was strung up between light posts along the canal line, as you can see an example of in the photo below.

Flooding and problems like this are clearly something that they are looking into, and there are a number of flood prevention projects underway, some not unlike the levees protecting northern Europe and the hurricane-prone U.S.