VENICE, Italy (NBC) – The mayor of Venice, Italy declared a state of emergency Wednesday as floods swept through one of the world’s best-known cities overnight.
For the past couple of days, Venice has been almost completely under water after it was hit by the worst high tide in the past 50 years.
Back-to-back tides as high as six feet combined with winds as strong as 60 mph.
It pushed the water from the lagoon into the city, submerging at some point 80 percent of it.
The only ways to go around these days, of course, is either with knee-high rubber boots or walking on raised platforms or of course with ferries or gondolas or water taxis. But even those are hard to find because last night, the water got so high that some of them got stranded under the bridge or on top of the pavements in the city.
Venetians haven’t seen a high tide this bad since 1966. And that’s why the mayor of Venice declared a state of emergency today and called for help to make sure that further tides in the future do not damage this beautiful city.
There are some more extraordinary tides forecasted for Thursday and Friday leaving many to wonder how long can this beautiful city of Venice resist before it is completely overcome by the seas that it has been living with for so long.
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