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Fifty years ago: the Vaiont night

Item

Title (Dublin Core)

Fifty years ago: the Vaiont night

Description (Dublin Core)

<p>A geologist at the beginning of his career in the early 1960’s was a teacher of mineralogy and geology at the Agordo “Follador” Mining Institute in the Dolomites area. It was 50 years ago now when he observed the building of the Vaiont dam, and here he tells us of the night of October 9, 1963, when he rushed to the Piave Valley together with the first-aid teams, to confront the remains of Longarone. Did the dam collapse? Everybody thinks so, but the moon was not shining enough to allow an understanding of what had happened. It was only the first faint light of dawn that revealed that the dam was still standing: it was only edged by the water, from the shaping of the tremendous wave that was raised by the Mount Toc landslide when it entered the basin at 100 km/h. The dam edge contributed to the projection of the wave onto the opposite slopes, where once the water mass was released from the narrow Vaiont canyon, it raised solidly into the air, grazing the Casso village and precipitated as a massive block on the Longarone area. Everybody looked upwards with hate and despair, at the residual water streamlets that were overflowing along the concrete wall of the dam. Over the white bare esplanade people appeared extremely small. Pitiful people, gathered around the bodies wrenched from the devastated houses, denuded and buried in the mud.<strong><br /></strong></p>

Creator (Dublin Core)

Valerio Spagna

Subject (Dublin Core)

Environmental risk
Vaiont disaster
Landslide
Flood
First-aid teams
Meteorology. Climatology
QC851-999
Geophysics. Cosmic physics
QC801-809

Publisher (Dublin Core)

Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)

Date (Dublin Core)

2012-07-01T00:00:00Z

Type (Dublin Core)

article

Identifier (Dublin Core)

1593-5213
2037-416X
10.4401/ag-5519
https://doaj.org/article/d0754e5a1dcb4639803c5c10493ab2d4

Source (Dublin Core)

Annals of Geophysics, Vol 55, Iss 3 (2012)

Language (Dublin Core)

EN

Relation (Dublin Core)

http://www.annalsofgeophysics.eu/index.php/annals/article/view/5519
https://doaj.org/toc/1593-5213
https://doaj.org/toc/2037-416X

Provenance (Dublin Core)

Journal Licence: CC BY