Venice flooding: Meet the Angels of the Acqua Alta saving hundreds of books amid anger over authorities’ failure to react Venice has been overwhelmed by the worst flooding for 50 years. But an army of volunteers has stepped in to the breach to salvage artefacts

In a library in a former Benedictine monastery on the tiny island of San Giorgio Maggiore, a group of volunteers work to salvage hundreds of books and periodicals, using paper towels to dry the sodden pages.

While some world-famous sites – including St Mark’s Basilica – were submerged last week when high tide reached 187cm in the worst floods to strike Venice for more than 50 years, thousands of lesser-known cultural resources were also damaged. Among these were the libraries of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, an academic research and cultural institute with 100,000 books and periodicals specialising in Venetian history and the history of art.

With ferries cut off, no one had been on the island to safeguard the ground-floor library last Tuesday as the waters rose, explains Emanuela Vozza, a former PhD student at the foundation.

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Hearing help was needed to rescue the books, Vozza posted a message in SOS Laguna, a hundreds-strong WhatsApp group that has sprung up spontaneously to respond to Venetians’ needs. The work, she says, is paying off: “The pages have dried, the books are just a bit warped now”.

The Angels of the Acqua Alta

Younger volunteers using social media are leading the colossal city clean-up, going door-to-door to offer help to shopkeepers and restaurants and checking on the elderly. Using Instagram, Facebook, Telegram and WhatsApp to spread the word, they identify places in the city where help is needed, fix appointments and coordinate operations.

With official emergency services under severe pressure, local residents and students are braving wet weather to drain flooded ground floors, move appliances, collect debris and ruined furniture and to send storm waste for recycling.

Some used private boats to clear debris from the streets when the overwhelmed local waste collection service failed to turn up. Venice Calls, an activist group formed by seven young locals last year, went to the Vignole agricultural island, where much of Venice’s fruit and vegetables are grown, to wash salt water from irrigation channels.

Sonia Demasi, a student activist from the Fridays for Future climate strike group, said they had temporarily shifted their focus to help residents, going to some of the worst affected islands such as Pellestrina where two people died. “The climate emergency is here in Italy now. We are helping because the community needs us, but we are still asking for a political solution.”

‘The city needs us’

As well as students, there are also pensioners and professionals who want to devote a few hours to volunteering. Zara Ayrumyan, who usually works as a Russian language tour guide, saw a post

on a Facebook page and joined a group removing dirty water and salt from the 7th church of Santi Apostoli in Cannaregio.

She said: “We washed the floors again and again, and I cleaned the sacristy. The city needs us.”

‘The climate emergency is here in Italy now. We are helping because the community needs us’

The media has dubbed the volunteers the “Angels of the Acqua Alta (high water)” – recalling the so-called Angels of Florence”, who rushed to rescue the Tuscan city’s cultural treasures after the Arno river flooded in 1966.

But the positive response has created some resentment. The council was slow to work with Venice Calls and tried to scare them off by saying that they would be held responsible for any accidents.

Undeterred, they extended their net of goodwill, reaching out to social media influencers asking what was needed, including Elisabetta Chiappino, an artist who lives on Burano. Islands suffer particularly badly from flooding because they are cut off by the lack of ferries and because of planning restrictions which mean homes are on the ground floor, she says.

‘We have to be self sufficient’

While thankful for the volunteers’ efforts, there is anger over the failure of the authorities to react effectively and to protect them from rising water. The emergency services didn’t appear on Burano for days, says retired fisherman Giancarlo D’Este, who, although in his seventies, moved all his electrical goods on to chairs and sofas alone: “Here, we have to be self sufficient.”

And the questions persist over the failure of local and national authorities to prevent such devastating floods. The government has invested €5.5bn (£4.7bn) in a floodgate system, the Mose, which would block sea water from entering the lagoon at four key entrances.

As with many infrastructure projects in Italy, the works have been delayed, with costs spiralling, culminating in a criminal investigation for bribery and money laundering in 2014. But the Mose is also fundamentally overambitious and ineffective, according to critics. Georg Umgiesser, a senior scientist at the Italian Institute of Marine Scientists’ National Research Centre, said an above-the-water solution, similar to the Thames Estuary floodgates, would have worked better. But the Italian government wanted the gates underwater for aesthetic reasons.

Underwater floodgates “are much more expensive and complicated”, as they are vulnerable to rusting and bio-fouling (the attachment of mussels and clams), he said. Sediment accumulation can also block the mechanism.

The Mose is 93 per cent complete but, according to Mr Umgiesser, there are doubts over whether it will be fit for purpose. It was built to withstand extreme tides of up to 3m, but intended to be used just 10 times a year. With rising sea levels, it may be needed 300 times a year.

It was not used against last week’s floods as it is still in testing phase, prompting anger from locals. “It cost a fortune but people would have forgotten about that if it worked. They missed a great chance to show off”, said Mr Umgiesser.