On November 13, 2019, Venice was hit with one of the worst floods in more than 50 years. Waters peaked at 6 ft, which is the highest tide to hit since 1966! This has brought the historic Italian city to “its knees” its mayor quoted. The flood has left an elderly man deceased as he was”trying to run electric pumps at his home on the island of Pellestrina, Alessandro Bertasi,” said spokesman for Venice’s mayor.

80% of the city was submerged including popular places like St.Mark’s Square and the Gritti Palace Luxury Hotel. Tourists even  photographed the madness while store owners emptied out their shops and vacuumed lagoon waters.

Venice’s mayor has currently put the damage of floods at hundreds of millions of dollars because the tides were so “extraordinary” that they declared a request for a state of emergency. Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs said that the current threat is “Venice becomes uninhabitable by normal humans beings. One of the great things about Venice is that real people live there and go about their daily business.” Oppenheimer also described how the current sea level events are affecting the weight and volume of the city saying, “Imagine you’re in a bathtub and you’re gradually lowering your body into the tub as the water level is rising,” “You get covered pretty fast.” The extreme sea levels are due to the climate change that’s happened globally.

But on the good side of things, people arrived from all over Italy to help clean up the worst of the damages. “I definitely think Venice can be saved,” says environmental scientist, Dr. da Mosto.