When the Boats Come In Venice 24/7

Venice, one of the most stunning cities on earth.

Over 50,000 tourists arrive here each day for the carnival,

culture and canals.

But what they don't see is how this city works,

this is Venice from the inside.

Around the clock, emergency teams fight to keep a city built on water safe and working.

BELL RINGING

With unprecedented access to police, fire, and medical teams,

we come face-to-face with the unique daily challenges,

and life-and-death drama.

Up to yesterday evening she was all right,

and this morning she was found not responsive.

This is Venice 24/7, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

It's summer in Venice, and the canals are congested

with around 35,000 motorboats travelling through the waterways.

The high volume of traffic takes its toll on the historic city,

as the choppy waters erode canal banks and the foundations beneath.

But each year,

the canals are cleared to make way for thousands of rowing boats.

For one day, Venice's motor engines fall silent,

and the city stops as locals and tourists take to the water

to celebrate their love for this ancient city.

The Vogalonga, or long row, is a 37-year-old, non-competitive regatta,

and people from all over the world sign up to take part.

First time, and I'm very excited

because everybody tells me it will be crowded, it'll be crazy.

34, I was hoping it would be like a thousand and something,

34, that's a good number.

Up to 6,000 people are expected to participate this year,

an all-female rowing team called Viva are regular entrants.

Team member, Nancy McIlroy from Kentucky, now lives in Venice.

I've been coming and going for nine years,

and then decided I just didn't want to be on vacation,

I really liked this life.

The things that I really love about Venice

are not the things I expected, really.

I mean, I think there's this whole mythological...

especially, I would say especially Americans because I know them better,

"Ah, Venizia, Venizia, Venice is so beautiful!"

Well, it is, but there's so much more

that's substantial about it, that is to love.

The women who form Viva are from Venice, Germany and the States,

and have rowed together for five years.

They practice five times a week,

the rowing festival is the culmination of all their hard work.

There's nothing more Venetian than the Voga.

My passion is rowing in these canals,

just think it's fantastic,

and there are people who row across the lagoon that are 60, 70, 80 years old at their own pace.

It's the best exercise in the world, it's social, it's civic,

it's just, it's part of this culture.

And we just refuse to let it go.

Open to boats moved by man power only,

the 19-mile journey is dedicated to raising awareness

of the damaging effect of motorboats on the city's foundations.

It's bad for the lagoon, it's bad for the ecology of the lagoon,

and it's certainly bad for all the infrastructure of the canals,

all the electricity, it's all underneath.

And when you go through a canal with this really powerful motor,

it just sucks, everything about it, it just ruins the infrastructure.

The speed limit is just three miles an hour,

the only boats allowed to break it are the emergency services,

who can travel over 30 miles an hour.

At the Venice fire station, shift boss, Giuliano Meinardi and his team get a callout.

There are 90,000 logs marking the waterways in Venice,

but the exposed wood rots quickly, causing them to detach,

creating a floating hazard for river traffic.

They try to put it up onto the boat, but it's too heavy.

So, an alternative solution is found.

The team drag the log to shore, where they can secure it,

out of the way of passing traffic.

Stopping this ancient city from crumbling into the water

is a problem faced by every Venetian.

Local police Commissioner, Giordano Zwinn,

is only too aware of his responsibility.

Reducing the speed of the boats

helps reduce the wave motion on the canals,

and it's up to local police to enforce these limits.

A high-tech network of 40 cameras in key positions across the city

is used to catch offenders breaking the speed limit along the Grand Canal.

A virtual map tracks the traffic in Venice's historic centre,

with a dot representing each boat,

green for a boat travelling within the speed limit,

yellow as soon as it's broken, and red for a speeding offence.

Controlling the canals and protecting the city is an age-old problem.

Venice grew over a millennium,

houses and palaces were built on wooden piles driven into the mud,

and tightly packed with clay.

It was from this floating city that the maritime power,

the Serenissima Republic, was born.

Today, the city's modern utilities are buried in these ancient foundations.

From the sewage system, to electric power lines and fibre-optic cables,

the life of the city depends on maintaining the structures it was built on.

Erosion repairs are constant,

whole canals must be blocked off and drained, so the work can be done.

Engineer, Adriano Ecole, works with the team at Insula,

a public company formed to carry out vital maintenance.

For them, the traditional ways are often still the best.

Two walls of wood or metal, are filled with tonnes of clay,

these dams are placed at each end of the section of the canal to be drained.

Vital work needs to be done as cracks and crumbling plaster

will appear in the building above,

but in Venice, even a simple repair becomes a massive job.

Once the canal is drained all the way down

the damage to the buildings becomes evident.

Sometimes, whole sections of the wall are in such a bad state

that they have to be removed.

But the teams must work quickly,

as once the wooden foundations are exposed to air, they begin to rot.

Using a process called scuci-cuci, meaning patch up,

the broken masonry must be made secure.

It takes three months to repair 50 metres of canal.

It's a time-consuming job, and there's no shortage of work.

As the day of the regatta approaches,

the weather takes a turn for the worse.

Despite the adverse conditions,

the women of Viva take to the water for some last-minute practice.

They're rowing in a caorlina,

a traditional, hand made Venetian fishing boat,

whose flat bottom makes it perfect for the shallow waters.

Up! Up!

Up!

But after less than an hour on the canals,

the team decides to abandon practice.

Did you feel the wind that just came, just across?

We were just, I could never row,

neither could Adele who was in the same position I was in the other boat.

We never rowed, if we rowed the boat just..."newwwh!"

This is like the theatre, you know,

when the rehearsal goes poorly, the opening night usually goes well.

We hope that's what it is, ha, we hope.

As the city prepares for the Vogalonga,

policeman, Andrea Silveri is on duty,

making sure that only licensed drivers are using the canals.

48,000 boats are officially allowed in the historic centre,

but during the busy summer, unlicensed ones can slip through the net.

It seems the boat this man is driving doesn't have a Venetian licence.

This time, the driver gets away with a fine and a warning.

But the fight to protect Venice

isn't just about controlling the canals.

Outside the historic centre,

there's also an unprecedented engineering project underway.

Out in the Venice lagoon,

they're working around the clock on the MOSE,

the biggest anti-flood project of its kind in the world.

Flood defences will be built in the three inlets at Lido,

Malomocco and Chioggia.

These will form a protective barrier

between Venice's historic centre and the sea.

At high tide, steel gates will rise

by pushing water out with compressed air.

These barriers will then stop the water from flooding the city.

These gates will be housed in concrete structures called caissons,

a kind of watertight box on the seabed.

Enrico Pellegrini is working in a 250 strong team.

The shape you can see here is the recess of the gates themselves,

which will be installed on the caissons,

once the caisson is on the bottom of the sea.

These enormous frames are designed by an Italian engineering company,

are unique to Venice.

They're now ready to be lowered into the water.

The fate of the entire project rests on this operation.

The thing is, that, we have to take these concrete caissons,

which are very big, 50 metres by 60 metres, by more than 10 metres in height,

and they weigh around 20 to 23,000 tonnes.

We have to take them from the prefabrication yard

and launch them into the water.

The frames or be transported via a railway system.

These carriages, which can push the equivalent weight of a Boeing 747,

will take the frames to a heavy lifting platform for the next stage.

At that point, we will transfer all the load on the platform,

and this platform is going to be lowered, very slowly of course,

until the caissons itself, it will start floating,

because the caissons, it's a box, it's an empty box actually,

even if it's a concrete, it's also very, very heavy.

Anyway, it's a box, and will start floating at a certain point.

From here, the frame is tugged out to the point in the lagoon

where the barrier will be constructed.

Once in place, it will lift to form a dam between Venice and the sea.

The whole operation takes around a week.

Due to the precision of what we have to achieve,

we are also operating at -30, -24, -30 metres underwater,

into a channel where the tide and the currant are very strong.

So, this is the thing,

it's the precision we have to achieve is very, very strict.

Enrico and the team have a total of 18 frames to construct.

As it takes a year to make each one,

they are working on 13 simultaneously.

The race is on to complete the project, without it,

Venice will continue to be at the mercy of rising sea levels.

At the Venice fire station, the team is taking a well earned break,

while one of their old colleagues returns for a visit.

Veteran fireman, Lele Tale Pietre, retired four months ago,

and has come back to see how his former team are doing.

But for those on duty, there is no glass of fizz

as it's not long until the next emergency callout.

Rough weather overnight has sunk a boat moored in a private dock.

And the owner has been unable to retrieve it himself.

Using pumps which can move 2,500 litres of water a minute,

they try to bail the boat out.

Every time they start pumping the water out,

more starts pouring into the back-end of the boat.

With the back-end made watertight,

they start to pump water out of the sunken boat again.

Finally, with the boat bailed out, they managed to pull it free from the mud,

and tow it to a winch close by.

Job completed, the team head back to the station,

where it's time to check their equipment.

It's the day of the Vogalonga.

Since early morning

the Grand Canal has been filling with thousands of rowers.

Organiser Antonio Rosa Salva, the son of the regatta's founder,

has spent the morning making sure everything is in order.

He's even managed to fix the weather.

The boats assemble at the start line,

including Nancy's rowing team.

Starting in the St Mark's Basin,

the route heads out in the direction of Burano,

then back through the main canal of Murano,

before re-entering the historic centre at Cannaregio.

For the duration of the regatta,

the canal is closed to all motor traffic,

with one exception.

In his powerboat, Coast Guard, Alessandro Visentine,

must take sure the regatta goes without a hitch.

But within minutes, the first emergency call arrives.

SIRENS

On arrival, they discover that it's a man overboard,

rather than a capsised boat.

Luckily for the Vogalonga rowers,

the regatta is heavily monitored by all of Venice's emergency services.

CHEERING

Almost everyone is busy with the Vogalonga,

things at the Venice hospital are a bit quieter than usual.

But not long into the shift, there's an emergency call.

SIRENS

Avoiding the busiest route, and travelling near empty side canals,

it doesn't take the team long to arrive.

It seems this lady already has a serious lung condition,

in order to try and establish the cause of her complaint,

the paramedics need to run a set of tests.

Given lady's age and medical history,

the team wants to take her back to hospital to run more in-depth tests.

Out in the lagoon, keeping the canals clear for the regatta

is still keeping Alessandro busy.

But Alessandro isn't just dealing with wayward motorboats,

one of the rowers has been taken ill.

The paramedics have been called,

but the ambulance is making slow progress through the thousands of boats.

This man's blood pressure is dangerously high,

so the paramedics take him straight to the hospital.

The Vogalonga is progressing into the afternoon,

for Nancy and her team, it's time to gather some energy

before pushing towards the finish line.

The regatta is over halfway through,

and the canals are increasingly congested.

Despite the fact this is a peaceful rowing event,

the motorboats still keep coming.

In Cannaregio,

the rowers are starting to arrive from the open lagoon.

The course becomes much more crowded as rowers jostle for position

to pass under the Three Arches Bridge,

towards the finish line.

Among them, the Viva rowing team.

And with seconds until the canon marks the regatta's end,

the man who fell in has made it back, just in time.

CANON FIRES

SINGING IN ITALIAN

With the Vogalonga over, Venice's canals return to the 21st century,

motorboats and all.

The truth is there's a place for all the boats in this lagoon,

but they have to slow down, they have to slow down,

it's better for the lagoon,

and it's certainly better to maintain this tradition of the Voga.

In the final episode,

the biggest event in Venice's calendar arrives,

the Redentore.

And a bridge is built across the Guidecca Canal in just a day.

As thousands of boats and revellers throng the water,

the emergency services struggle to be heard.

And Venice's final party of the season goes off with a bang.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd