The Wave Jumped Over the World's Tallest Dam

On October 9, 1963, a wave 250 meters high jumped over the tallest dam in the world. The dam survived. The town below it did not. At 10:39 PM, the Vajont Dam stood above the small town of Longarone in northern Italy. Behind the dam was a lake. Above the lake was a mountain the locals called Toc, "rotten." And for four years, the engineers had known it was moving. That night, 260 million cubic meters of rock slid into the lake in about twenty seconds. The wave climbed 250 meters above the top of the dam, leapt over it, and erased Longarone in four minutes. 1,910 people died. 487 of them were children. The dam survived almost untouched. It is still standing today. This is the full story of the Vajont disaster: the crack shaped like a letter M, the geologist's son whose report was softened, the journalist who was taken to court for telling the truth, the scale model that gave the wrong answer, the telephone call 39 minutes before the wave, and a twelve-year-old girl who was pulled out of her bed and survived. Chapters: 0:00 10:39 PM 0:32 The valley and the dam 1:19 The mountain called "rotten" 2:13 November 1960: the M-shaped crack 2:43 The designer's son 3:25 Tina Merlin 3:54 The model that lied 5:19 A dangerous game 6:14 September 1963 7:03 October 9, the last day 7:50 10:39 PM 8:44 Longarone 9:22 Micaela 10:09 The morning after 10:36 The trial 11:06 The dam today Micaela Coletti's words are taken from her published interviews; her voice in this video is re-created. Sources: Fondazione Vajont, "Timeline of a disaster: from the construction of the Vajont plant to the trial" (F. Niccolini); Semenza E., "The Story of Vaiont Told by the Geologist Who Discovered the Landslide"; Müller L., 1964, "The rock slide in the Vajont valley"; Hendron & Patton 1985 (US Army Corps of Engineers); Paronuzzi & Bolla 2012; L'Unità archive (Tina Merlin, 1959–1961); BBC and ANSA interviews with Micaela Coletti. Archival photographs (Wikimedia Commons, public domain / Creative Commons): Ispettorato Vigili del Fuoco; U.S. Army; Archivio Aime Simone; Carlo Semenza (1960), Tina Merlin — unknown photographers (PD); Diga del Vajont Pasqua 2013 — Jonathan.astolfi, CC BY-SA 3.0; La diga del Vajont vista da Longarone — Emanuele Paolini (PD); Cimitero Vajont — Tor91, PD; Disastro Vajont Erto, Vajont Dam — Andre86, CC0; Vajont Dam ENEL; Vajont panoramio photos; map of the Vajont valley. Stock footage: Pexels. Video of the Vajont Dam (2013): "Diga del Vajont, Staumauer" by Im Fokus, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 — "Rising Tide", "Oppressive Gloom", "Hiding Your Reality", "Interloper", "Unrelenting", "Five Armies", "Heavy Heart", "Dark Times", "Lasting Hope". #vajont #dam #disaster #history #documentary