sansaregina: history meme — italian version // four natural disasters: vajont dam di
sansaregina: history meme — italian version // four natural disasters: vajont dam disaster When built, the Vajont dam was the tallest of its kind in the world, harnessing the waters of a small mountain torrent to create a lake meant to generate hydroelectric power for northern Italy’s postwar economic miracle. But the engineers and geologists had ignored the warnings of locals that the land was unstable and that their work had triggered worrying seismic movements. Late on the evening of 9 October 1963, a vast chunk of the mountainside, the size of a small town and 400m (1,312ft) deep, sheared off. Forty-five seconds later, travelling at 100km/h (62mph), it plunged into the new artificial lake, creating an inland tsunami that rose more than 200m above the dam before plunging headlong towards Longarone, directly in its path. The wall of water pushed an air pocket before it. It was more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. So strong, in fact, that almost all the victims were found naked, their clothes blown off by the blast. The dam survived but 80% of the inhabitants of Longarone and its satellite villages did not. In all, almost 2,000 people are known to have died - but the final death toll will never be known. (x) -- source link
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