October 9, 1963
Vajont
A landslide into a reservoir, and a wave over the dam
The dam was the tallest in the world and the mountain beside it was moving. The geologists knew. The company filled the reservoir anyway, and the creeping became a slide.
At twenty-two minutes to eleven at night, two hundred and sixty million cubic metres of mountain went into the water in forty-five seconds. The wave went two hundred and fifty metres over the top of the dam and down the valley.
Longarone was gone in four minutes. The dam was undamaged and still stands.
About nineteen hundred were killed. The trial that followed found the engineers and the company had known, and the phrase used in Italy since is that it was not a natural disaster.
Figures vary between 1,900 and 2,500; 1,917 is the figure on the memorial.