St. Petersburg’s Storeys. City is Growing Up. Flood Prevention Facility Complex
ST. PETERSBURG IS NOT ATLANTIS. HOW THE CITY DEFEATED FLOODS
The Lakhta Center presents a new episode of the “St. Petersburg’s Storeys. City is Growing Up” project. We are about to visit the Dam – the St. Petersburg Flood Prevention Facility Complex, and our tour will be hosted by Anton Zhirnov, the guide of the “St. Petersburg Through Engineers’ Eyes” project.
Our city has experienced over 300 floods. The 84th one, known as the St. Petersburg Flood, was one of the biggest in the world history. On November 7, 1824, the water in the Neva River rose more than 4 meters above normal. The natural disaster damaged about 4,000 houses and practically washed away Vasilyevsky Island, 82 houses at the Petrogradskaya Side and 9 at the Narvskaya Side. As many as 480 people and 3,600 animals perished. The damage was estimated at RUB 20 million, which is over RUB 17 billion in current value terms.
Some say that catastrophic floods return to St. Petersburg every century: in 1777, 1824, 1924. Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about the next milestone anymore, as the Flood Prevention Facility Complex (the Dam) has been protecting us since 2011. Over its 10 years of operation, the Dam has prevented 26 floods. Watch how this works in our video tour of St. Petersburg’s longest storey.
00:00 – A wall between the city and the sea
00:10 – St. Petersburg’s largest flood
01:00 – The St. Petersburg Dam was conceived 200 years ago
01:54 – 10th anniversary of the Flood Prevention Facility Complex
02:09 – The anatomy of the Dam
02:56 – Culvert structures: sluices and smelt fish
04:07 – Flat sluice lives at the bottom of the gulf
05:15 – Floating sluice and underwater tunnel
07:01 – The Dam: grand and round-the-clock
