Today October 9th 2023 marks 60 years from the Vajont tragedy. On this same day in 1963 (at around 10PM) a landslide moved down from the mount Toc, cause of the continuos rains of the previous days, and fell into the artificial dam between Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia. An enormous wave of water moved over the dam (that crumbled down) and covered a village, taking a way around 2000 people's lives.
More infos and old newspapers here:
Tonight at 9:15 PM (GMT+2) on Mediaset Focus (click on "tutte le dirette") there will be a special about this tragedy. You'll need an Italian vpn to watch it.
This happened in my region! Often classified as a "natural disaster", this is actually the worst man-made disaster to ever have happened on Italian soil. The entire side of the mountain fell into the artificial lake because of human greed and hubris, and two thousand people died who could still be alive today (many of them were children).
The company working on the dam (one of the tallest in the world, still), Sade, continued to disregard warnings by the local population that landslides and signs of seismic activity had begun happening since they started cutting into the sides of the mountains; they, of course, chose profits over human lives. The villagers kept asking if it was safe: on the night of the disaster, they were once again told they had nothing to worry about and to remain at home, despite knowing something terrible might happen soon.
After the two villages hit by the megatsunami (Longarone wiped off the map, Erto semi-destroyed), authorities worked hard to forcefully relocate survivors: not only were they never compensated or officially apologized to, but authorities buried the story and tried to erase what happened entirely (many snuck back into their houses and lived there without water or electricity for years, refusing to leave). Only young journalist Tina Merlin attemped to tell the truth (and was sued by Sade for it - she won the case, of course, but her reputation remained bismirched for years).
The villages were rebuilt a little further up the mountain in a safer place. Because the dam held, and is still there, it has changed not only the topography but the weather cycles of the place forever: the ghost village of old Erto and the surrounding villages are perpetually sunk in fog, a fog so thick sometimes that it covers up the moon.
That's a picture I took there last year: up on the right, the new village; down center, where the fog is thicker, where the old village used to be.