This epic Italian national catastrophe is known as the ‘Vajont disaster’. In 2008 it has been declared “the biggest man-made disaster in history” by United Nations. Despite this, it has been hardly ever known or mentioned abroad, and most of the Italian people still believe the Vajont disaster was caused by natural reasons.
It’s a predictable tragedy: the owners of the dam knew that Mount Toc was unstable, but nobody stopped it. After all, the spectacular new dam was regarded as a marvel of Italian engineering genius. Warning signs and negative appraisals during the early stages of filling the artificial lake were completely disregarded.
On that night 270 million m³ of heavy compact rock collapsed from Mount Toc. The landslide slid into the vast reservoir containing 115 million m³ of water. The dam remained intact, but more than 2000 people were killed. Most of the victims’ bodies of the Vajont disaster were never found and it is believed they were pulverised by the impact with the mass of air moving, impact which has being compared to two Hiroshima bombs.
50 years later, due to the broken promises that the Italian Governments have made to help bring back Erto to life, the village looks like a ghost town, with most of the abandoned houses collapsing year by year, with the village risking once again to disappear.
