9/4/2024
Chometemporary

The story of the Vajont disaster 61 years later

Sixty-one years have passed since the Vajont disaster, which claimed the lives of more than two thousand people on October 9, 1963. Younger people have only heard about it in passing, and probably not everyone knows how such a tragedy came about. In fact, there are several causes behind the landslide that caused the tidal wave and the consequent overflow of more than 50 million cubic meters of water and mud from the newly created dam, which poured over the Piave Valley affecting more than 20 towns, destroying the town of Longarone and causing two thousand victims.

This is not a disaster attributable to unpredictable natural phenomena. Behind Vajont is a long history of irresponsibility, greed and power, a history whose only protagonists are men. On the one hand, mountain people and peasants who worked their little piece of land, handed down through generations, for their livelihood. On the other, businessmen, pseudo-scientists, bureaucrats and politicians, and a power company that wanted to build the "great Vajont": a huge reservoir capable of supplying electricity to Venice and the entire Triveneto.

 

The story of these people was told by a few white flies who had the courage to denounce the events involving the inhabitants and the authorities during the planning and construction of the big dam. Tina Merlin was a journalist originally from those valleys, where she lived and, in addition to fighting the partisan war, fought the battle to prevent the construction of the dam. She was denounced, tried and then acquitted, along with the editor in chief of L'Unità, of the charge of publishing false news!!! Today we are left with her stories and a dam that was never dismantled and remains as a sinister memorial in a now empty valley.

 

We reproduce below the article written on October 11, 1963 by Tina Merlin, 2 days after the disaster. She tells about SADE, the power company that pushed to build the dam, and how the farmers reacted. She talks about the story of her countrymen, the people who lived through the tragedy.

We wanted to remember in this way a disaster that should never have happened.

 

October 11, 1963

THE UNIT WAS PROSECUTED FOR REPORTING THE DANGER

 

It was genocide. This is shouted by the few survivors, rendered insane by the terror of the avalanche of water and the despair of finding themselves alone and powerless to overcome a tragic reality, now made of nothing, or rather made of stones and slime amalgamated by the blood of their loved ones. A reality that suddenly disrupted the physiognomy of entire villages, but which was unfortunately foreseeable for years, since even at the beginning of work on the great Vajont hydroelectric reservoir, technicians knew they were building on clayey and landslide-prone soil, which therefore could lead to catastrophe.

 

Genocide therefore to be shouted aloud to all, so that the cry will shake the consciences of the people, and the people, whose skin never counts for anything in the face of the dividers of the steam masters, will at last sweep away with a wave of anger and indignation those who play with the lives of thousands of human creatures with impunity, in cold blood, for the purpose of increasing their own profits and power.

 

Let someone, if they dare, refute me right now. I take responsibility for what I say; the perpetrators take responsibility for what they have done. And let justice judge.

 

I affirm that yes, they are moral and material responsibilities. I followed the Vajont flood affair with passion not only as a journalist, but as a daughter of these peasant and mountain people rebelling against the rhetoric of "traditional virtues" that poorly conceals the cynicism of the most ruthless exploitation. It was with this heart that I followed all the vicissitudes, the resistance, the fears of the mountain people of Erto against the "Sade," not to prevent it from building the great Vajont reservoir, but to prevent it from carrying out a crime. The intuition and experience of those mountaineers, comforted moreover by the opinions of great geologists, indicated the Vajont Valley was unsuitable to withstand the pressure of 160 million meter-cubes of water. Reality proved the mountain people right, not that of the "Sade" engineers.

 

The power company knew that the walls of the reservoir were formed from the soil of a huge landslide that fell hundreds of years ago, on which the town of Erto was later built. It knew that Mount Toc was itself part of that landslide, and that it was foreseeable that the water put into the reservoir could slowly erode the subsoil and cause disasters. Four years ago, when the resistance of the basin was tested, large cracks had marked the houses of S. Martino and other hamlets of Erto on the slopes of the Toc. They slowly extended close to the mountain, causing fear among the residents of Erto. They appealed in vain to every possible authority, giving legal status to a large unitary committee that fought for years in an attempt to oppose the construction of the reservoir, supported also by the authoritative technical opinion of the geologist Prof. Gortani, who was fully opposed to the expertise of the geologist of the "Sade," Prof. Dal Piaz. Prof. Gortani believed, in fact, that it was crazy to build the reservoir on such unsuitable soil as that of Erto. The committee forwarded appeals. It organized petitions and public protests. It interested government authorities and local administrators. At some of these authorities the committee's voice was heard.The provincial council, on February 15, 1961, voted unanimously on an agenda calling for the revocation of all concessions to "Sade" for non-compliance with the law. In it precise reference was made to the Vajont situation, calling for the timely preparation of all safety measures to guarantee the safety of those populations. It was a stance that went unanswered. What would have happened if the mountain had collapsed into the lake at its maximum capacity?

 

I became the spokesman for those mountain people and wrote an article for "l'Unità," pointing out what might have happened and which happened today as exactly as I had described it. The public authority accused me of propagating false and tendentious news likely to disturb public order. The judicial authority charged me with a crime, without, moreover, going to the scene to ascertain the truth. I was tried in Milan together with the editor-in-chief of"Unità."

 

In Milan, they generously offered to come and witness so many of the inhabitants of Erto who were close to me in their protests, in their public demonstrations, in supporting the struggle; something that so many governmental and non-governmental parliamentarians of the time did not do, despite having been officially invited to intervene by the population. Comrade Honorable Bettiol and I, who represented the Communist Party, were alone and always the only ones to actively support the reasons of the Erto highlanders. They vigorously defended me before the judges of the Court of Milan and proved, with evidence and testimony, not only that I had written the truth, but that the whole country was in danger and that, together with Erto, the villages of the Longaronese were also in danger.

 

The judges absolved me, but the authorities who were supposed to take into account the facts and prevent a possible massacre, instead gave the green light to "Sade" for its criminal experiments. Made, moreover, with the billions of the Italian people, the many billions that the government gave to "Sade" outright for the construction of the artificial lake and which, perhaps, are now safely across the border. Billions stolen from the people, with the consent of the governing authorities. Those same authorities who by running the hydroelectric plants today, and knowing that for about a month the Vajont situation had been getting worse, failed to avert the immense disaster that struck the Belluno area tonight, creating a cemetery over a vast populated area.

 

I am writing these lines with a heart clenched with remorse for not having done more to induce the people of these lands to rebel against the deadly threat that has now become a tragic reality. Today, however, one cannot only mourn. It is time to learn something.

  

Article from the website of theTina Merlin Cultural Association

Download the document