Flood-weary Venice puts 'Moses' inflatable barriers to test
enice has conducted a trial run of an ambitious anti-flood system of 78 inflatable barriers in hopes of protecting the lagoon city from devastating high tides.
Premier Giuseppe Conte on Friday at a ceremony in Venice pressed a button that activated compressors to pump air into the bright yellow barriers, which then started rising from the sea to act as a kind of a dike-on-demand. All 78 barriers were successfully raised, authorities said.
The project, riddled by corruption, was supposed to be working in 2011. Now the latest date is 2021, but Conte expressed hope it could be ready by this autumn. In November 2019, Venice suffered its worst flooding in more than 50 years.
The project’s name, Moses, recalls the Biblical figure who, the Old Testament recounts, parted the waters of the Red Sea. But it also is the Italian acronym for Experimental Electromechanical Modules.
At: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/flood-weary-venice-puts-moses-inflatable-barriers-test-71712516
