VENICE, Italy— Davide Pontini has seen his share of floods here in his native city. But the one this week shocked him as the tide rose to the second-highest level since records began 150 years ago, inundating swaths of the city that normally stay dry and adding to anxiety about Venice’s long-term future.
The city has suffered severe damage in recent days, including to the iconic St. Mark’s Basilica, as the water in the lagoon rose as high as 6 feet 2 inches above its normal level, peaking early on Wednesday. The highest flood ever recorded, in 1966, was just a few inches higher.
Local press said it was only the fifth time in more than 10 centuries that the interior of the church, which dominates the city’s central square, had flooded, with three of those five incidents occurring in the last 20 years.
Mr. Pontini, a 40-year-old baker, and other locals have been waiting for years for a flood-protection system known as MOSE to begin operation. The Italian government has spent about €5.5 billion ($6.1 billion) building the deployable underwater dam system, which was supposed to be operational several years ago but has been beset by problems including engineering setbacks and alleged corruption.
“If they ever finish it maybe it will work, but are we so sure?” asked Mr. Pontini as he tied down a wayward boat that had been floating down a canal. “They tell me Santa Claus exists, but I’ve never seen him.”
Venice is dealing with a series of existential problems including depopulation, steadily rising sea levels and, notably this week, increasingly severe incidents of acqua alta, or high water. Since its founding around 1,600 years ago, the city has endured the temporary flooding that arrives almost every fall. But locals note that it is becoming harder to pretend that something isn’t fundamentally changing. This week’s inundation came almost exactly a year after another exceptionally high acqua alta.
“It’s not like the weather is getting any better year to year, so you’d think they would get it together and finish MOSE,” said Lucio Lizzul as he dried out his shop selling traditional Venetian carnival masks. “I lost a lot of merchandise to the flood, but the real disaster is that tourism is going to plunge for the next two weeks as people see the flooding on the internet and decide not to come.”
High-end hotels near St. Mark’s Square, including the iconic Gritti Palace that was frequented by Ernest Hemingway and Peggy Guggenheim, were mopping up on Wednesday as the flood receded. A palazzo further up the Grand Canal caught fire after an electric-fuse box exploded.
The high tide pushed small boats up onto Venice’s quays, as well as some of the bigger vaporetti vessels used as public transportation on the canals. Damaged boats sat marooned on Wednesday afternoon as the water receded. Venice’s La Fenice opera house canceled rehearsals after water flowed into service areas.
“Tourists love it, they think it’s a game, but it’s a big problem for us,” said Luca Bezzi, a 25-year-old driver of a water taxi. “There were boats all over the place. A total mess.”
On one of the long, narrow islands that create a natural barrier between the Venetian lagoon and the Adriatic Sea, a man died from electrocution as he tried to pump water out of his home, according to local press reports.
Talk of building a system to protect Venice from the acqua alta began soon after the 1966 flood and took off in earnest in the 1980s, when the idea for MOSE—an acronym for Experimental Electromechanical Module that forms the Italian spelling of Moses—was first discussed. Construction began in 2003, following extensive debate during which detractors said MOSE would damage sea life and could bring a host of unexpected problems.
The controversial system of deployable dams will block the three entrances to the lagoon from the sea. It is designed to be used only when the tide rises more than 3 feet 7 inches.
Scheduled to be finished last year, MOSE is now supposed to become operational at the end of 2021. Several managers with the company building MOSE were charged with taking kickbacks and have accepted plea bargains, delaying construction as authorities placed the company under special administration.
While shop owners and restaurants spent Wednesday cleaning up, much of Venice was back to life as normal, with tourists plying the canals in gondolas while locals sipped Prosecco at quay-side bars.
The flood caught many tourists off guard, including Veronica Sanguedolce, a 17-year-old high-school student on a class visit from Rome. “We entered a restaurant last night to eat with everything seemingly normal, and by the time we came out a little more than an hour later the water was halfway up my thigh,” she said.
Late on Wednesday the tide began rising again. It was forecast to rise to a level below that of the night before but still high enough to cause widespread damage. St. Mark’s Square, one of the lowest parts of the city, was quickly underwater again.
Many locals promised to soldier on in Venice despite the myriad problems hounding the maritime city and the easier life beckoning just a few miles away on the mainland.
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Mr. Pontini, the baker. “Venetians move to the mainland and then they complain it’s not Venice.”
Write to Eric Sylvers at eric.sylvers@wsj.com
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