Vajont is situated
about 100 km due north of Venice within the jap extension of the Italian
Dolomite Mountains, part of the Alpine arc. It is usually located on the boundary
between the Italian areas of Veneto and Friuli Venezia-Giulia. The Vajont
valley is an jap lateral tributary to the Piave River, which flows into the
Adriatic Sea northeast of the Venetian lagoon. The world is famend for the
First World Battle battles that have been fought at numerous areas there.
Within the late Nineteen Fifties,
SADE, the regional hydroelectric firm, ready to construct a dam on the Vajont
stream. The placement, near the outlet of the valley, was chosen as a result of it
was the location of a deep, V-shaped defile in exhausting rock. The construction was to be a
double-arched concrete dam constructed up with pre-cast concrete blocks. A
double-arched construction throws the strain on the upstream facet of the dam
onto the shoulders of the valley and might thus be a really robust answer that
resists destruction by distinctive forces. The meant goal of the dam was
to manage the circulation of water to electrical generators on the Piave River by
guaranteeing a provide at occasions when the primary river was at low circulation.
Throughout the
building of the dam a sizeable landslide occurred within the valley upstream.
Upon completion, at 262.5 metres from ground to rim, it was the best concrete
arch-dam on this planet. In 1960, because the water started to be impounded, there was a
700,000 cubic metre landslide into the reservoir on the south facet, which is
dominated by the huge bulk of Mount Toc. Numerous measures have been taken to watch
and management slope stability, however they proved ineffective. On ninth October 1963,
at 22:39 native time, a 240 million cubic metre landslide dashed into the
reservoir from the flanks of Mount Toc, travelling at about 100 km/hr.
The mechanism of
the Vajont landslide has been vigorously debated ever since. It was a sturzstrom,
based on the time period coined in 1930 by the eminent Swiss geologist Albert
Heim. On the time solely about 60 examples of sturzströme had been
documented on this planet. The phenomenon was controversial and poorly
understood. Primarily, the bigger the shifting mass, the decrease the basal
friction, which is counter-intuitive by way of primary physics. The Vajont
landslide slid as a type of gigantic mattress on a clean aircraft of rock.
The fabric
cascaded into the lake and produced a water-wave 180 metres excessive which climbed
the opposing slope of the valley and obliterated the hamlet of Erto, in addition to
damaging just a few homes in Casso, situated additional up the slope. Frantic efforts
had been made to cut back the water stage behind the dam, however it was solely about
30 metres beneath the lip. The landslide-generated wave was about 100 metres excessive
because it abruptly modified route from northwards to westwards. It was thus 70
metres excessive because it gushed into the Piave valley straight in direction of the city of
Longarone. It obliterated the city, apart from only a few buildings
situated at a ways from its centre. The wave then roared down the Piave
valley, destroying eleven small settlements because it went. At Vittorio Veneto, 44
km away, it was nonetheless six metres excessive.
Some 1,917 individuals
have been killed, most of them immediately, by the water wave. The dam survived with
minor harm to its rim. The reservoir ceased to exist, because it was now crammed
with rock particles from the landslide. A small lake survives to today 2 km
upstream. Longarone was rebuilt, largely by emigres who returned from working
overseas and elsewhere in Italy. The dam stays as a sombre monument to the
catastrophe. It’s seen from Longarone and its environs within the Piave valley.
In essence, the
catastrophe was brought on by a collection of dangerous and unsustainable selections concerning the
stability of the Alpine panorama within the Vajont valley. The strata on Mount Toc
are, to make use of a helpful Italian time period, a franapoggio, oriented within the
route of the slope in a means that gives a prepared slip floor for
overlying materials. There have been low-strength zones at depth. Filling the
reservoir elevated the pore-water strain on the base of the slope, which
decreased its power. Lastly, as subsequent analysis has revealed, sturzströme
should not unusual within the Alps.
Through the years
after the catastrophe, a continuing stream of geologists and engineers visited the
web site, which remained largely undisturbed, forlorn and peaceable in its horrible
grandeur. It’s significantly awe-inspiring within the chilly, gray mild of winter. A
memorial park, mass-burial cemetery and two chapels have been constructed. Marble
tablets on the entry tunnel to the dam commemorated the lack of life. In
Longarone a documentation centre and small museum have been constructed, together with a
civil safety coaching centre.
Lately, the location
of the catastrophe has been opened as much as tourism, with a customer centre, guided
excursions and a protected walkway throughout the rim of the dam. The valley has begun
to lose its air of abandonment and isolation. Furthermore, on the night of the
sixtieth anniversary of the catastrophe (ninth October 2023), 170 theatres in Italy held
manifestations, performs and readings, with a collective pause in the meanwhile of
the tragedy, 22:39 hrs. This was particularly designed to maintain the reminiscence alive
and assist people who find themselves too younger to have lived on the time of the catastrophe to
learn about it. The theatre performances drew upon a wealthy heritage of books,
research, memoirs, performs and music that through the years has commemorated the
Vajont tragedy. There may be additionally a serious cinema movie concerning the catastrophe, with
spirited performances by actors representing the primary protagonists, together with
the engineers and geologists concerned in planning and designing the reservoir
and dam.
Within the aftermath of
catastrophe there’s usually a stress between those that need to commemorate the
occasion and people who need to neglect it, or to obscure the reminiscence. For instance,
in Lombardy 200 km away from Vajont lies the Stava valley, the place in July 1985
the collapse of two mine tailings dams led to a mudflow which killed 264
individuals. For years, efforts to create a documentation centre and memorial on the
web site have been routinely blocked. On the different finish of the size, within the Tōhoku
area of northeast Honshu, Japan, there at the moment are 62 museums devoted to the
March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear launch. For higher or worse, this
is an space wherein catastrophe tourism has come to remain.
Absolutely we might all
agree that to keep away from repeating errors of response and mitigation it’s important
to study the teachings of disasters, and that so as to take action we have to preserve
the reminiscence of such occasions alive. But researchers have additionally described a phenomenon
known as ‘darkish tourism’, which tells us that individuals can have good or dangerous motives
for wanting to go to the websites of previous disasters. This can be a difficult matter,
as it’s tough to outline what is nice and what’s dangerous. However, some
of the ‘catastrophe vacationers’ could also be mere sensation seekers whereas others are
motivated by a extra noble need to study and to confront the realities of
life.
With 60 years of
hindsight, it is extremely clear that a big reservoir dam ought to by no means have been
constructed at Vajont and that the tragedy resulted from appalling negligence in
permitting that to occur in an space of steep, unstable slopes, fractured
geological formations and a extremely uncovered inhabitants. A remarkably comparable
catastrophe had occurred in France in 1959 with the collapse of the Malpasset dam
and the lack of 423 lives. As soon as once more, superficial geological and geotechnical
survey work was on the coronary heart of the calamity. Sadly, comparable tragedies
have continued to happen (witness the Derna, Libya, dam collapses of September
2023) and have typically been narrowly averted (as within the Whaley Bridge,
Derbyshire, emergency of August 2019, which necessitated the evacuation of
1,500 residents from downstream. On steadiness, it’s helpful, not just for us all
to listen to these tales, however for us all to consider carefully about what they imply
by way of human security sooner or later.
