‘You’re Walking Backwards’: The $6 Billion Venice Floodgates May Not Be Enough Curbed 12/16/2020 Justin Davidson On November 3, 1966, a storm propelled by a warm Saharan wind shot up the Adriatic, pummeling northern and central Italy with rain. Venice flooded, as it had, regularly, forever. By the next morning, though, it was clear that this was no ordinary dunking, but a biblical-scale event. The storm kept churning toward the coast, so that even when the tide started to recede, the floodwaters had nowhere to go. Waves demolished 18th-century seawalls, cut off islands, drowned cattle, and obliterated vineyards. Soon, a mass of sludge, more than six-feet deep and glistening with oil that had leaked from blown-out boilers, swirled through virtually every building, and refused to ebb for nearly 24 hours. When the sea finally withdrew, in violent, sucking currents, it left canals choked with mattresses and floating rats and a city traumatized by the worst flood it had ever known.