Vajont disaster, tragedy on 9 October 1963: almost 2 thousand victims
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THE DISASTER OF 9 OCTOBER 1963
A dozen towns destroyed, 1,917 estimated victims, but many of the bodies of the missing never found. The Vajont dam disaster is one of the most dramatic pages in Italian history of the 20th century. The enormous rock landslide came off at 10.39pm on 9 October 1963
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A WAVE OF 230 METERS
Two square kilometers of surface and 260 million cubic meters of volume detached themselves from the slopes of Monte Toc, between Friuli Venzia Giulia and Veneto. The enormous mass, a single body, fell into the underlying artificial lake in which on 11 April, with the third and final invasion test, the water had reached 700 meters above sea level. The crash raised a wave 230 meters high
Mattarella: "Tragedy that has been questioning consciences for 60 years"
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THE DESTROYED COUNTRIES
Half of the mass of water went over the dam, falling into the Piave valley below, causing the destruction of several towns (Longarone, Pirago, Maè, Rivalta, Villanova, Faè, Codissago, Castellavazzo). The other part of the wave went up the valley and hit the Friulian villages of Erto and Casso and several other villages
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THE ALARM
That something was about to happen on the eve of the disaster was noticed by Alberico Biadene, construction director of Sade, who on 8 October (not even 24 hours after the disaster) asked the top management of the dam construction company to sound the alarm and provide an evacuation plan for Erto and Casso. At 10 pm the surveyor Giancarlo Rittmeyer telephoned Biadene, in Venice, to communicate his concern, given that the mountain had begun to visibly give way: 39 minutes after the telephone call, the disaster
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PLACES TRANSFORMED
The geography of the places, already upset by the construction of the dam, changed forever. The wave razed the villages and splintered the mountains while a gigantic 'M'-shaped scar formed on Monte Toc
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SUBMERGED COUNTRIES
Houses, churches, hotels, taverns, squares, streets and monuments were submerged by the water and debris dragged by its force
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THE BENT RAILS
All that remained of the railway station were long stretches of tracks bent like twigs
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THE INTACT BELL TOWER
Only the bell tower of Pirago, a hamlet of Longarone, was saved by the water
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"THE WAVE OF DEATH"
On 10 October, Corriere della Sera opens the newspaper with the title "The wave of death" and sends Giorgio Bocca and Dino Buzzati from Belluno to the scene
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THE CRYING OF PRESIDENT SEGNI
The ministerial commission of inquiry was launched immediately. The President of the Republic Antonio Segni rushed to the Piave valley and, seeing the disaster from above in a helicopter, cried
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THE PROCESS
The procedural process was very long. In 1968, the investigating judge of Belluno, Mario Fabbri, filed the sentence against the construction director of SADE Biadene, the only one who would spend time in prison, and 10 other people, two of whom had died in the meantime.
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THE CONVICTIONS
The first degree trial was held in the L'Aquila court with the first three sentences, in 1969, six years in prison, two of which were pardoned. In 1970, again in L'Aquila, the appeal was held and those condemned here were Biadene and a second person
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THE CONFIRMATION
The sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court in 1971 but the only one to serve a sentence was Biadene (five years of imprisonment, three of which were pardoned)
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THE CIVIL TRIAL
In the Seventies, however, the battle for damages began, in civil court, with a troubled path: the first degree sentence of the Court of Belluno arrived in February 1997. The Court of Appeal of Venice confirmed the sentence for Montedison (a company which SADE had joined in the meantime) to compensate the Municipality of Longarone for material and moral damages
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THE CONTROVERSY
The last act of the journey ended with Enel, the current owner of the dam, paying penalties to the municipalities of Erto and Casso. However, the controversies over the predictability of the disaster and the procedural process have never subsided
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RECONSTRUCTION
Without rescuers, Longarone today (in the photo the town bell tower after the landslide) would probably not exist. And an avenue has been named after them - those who worked to extract the bodies from the mud and helped to restart life. This is the road onto which Longarone Fiere overlooks, testifying to the close and inseparable link between the solidarity work of the rescuers of 1963 and the new Longarone born from the reconstruction
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NISCEMI AND THE COMPARISON WITH THE VAJONT
In January 2026, a landslide involving approximately 350 million cubic meters occurred in Niscemi (Caltanissetta). The head of the Civil Protection, Fabio Ciciliano, on Sky TG24, explained that, technically, in the case of the Sicilian landslide the amount of landslide mass that fell was almost one and a half times compared to that of the Vajont (which was 263 million cubic metres). In the photo, a scene from the Vajont tragedy
NISCEMI LANDSLIDE: THE SKY TG24 SPECIAL
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