DAM COLLAPSES NEAR VENICE

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30259, 11 October 1963, Page 15

DAM COLLAPSES NEAR VENICE

Thousands Drowned In Their Beds (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) BELLUNO (Northern Italy), October 10. Italy’s 873-foot concrete Vaiont dam, the third highest dam in the world, collapsed shortly before midnight yesterday. Millions of tons of water discharged on to sleeping communities in the Piave river valley. It is feared that “thousands” are dead. Longarone, a community of 2800 people close to the dam, was reported to have been completely submerged.

At least half a dozen other communities were hit.

Communications in the dam area, 10 miles north of Belluno. were wiped out. Hospitals in communities surrounding the stricken area reported receiving a growing stream of injured, rising in the hundreds. In Rome, the Interior Minister, Mr Mariano Rumor, ordered all public security forces in Italy’s north-east alps between Venice and the Austrian border on emergency duty to rush aid to the victims.

Calls went out to American military bases at Verona and Vicenza, south of the danger zone, for helicopters for rescue operations. The volume of water released by the collapse was so great that in Belluno the level of the Piave suddenly rose 16 feet, flooding fields and roads before subsiding. Longarone was reported to be a wilderness of mud.

The town is at the junction of tfhe Vaiont and the Piave rivers.

Other small villages reported to have been hit by the water are Codistavo, Malcom and Villanova. Police said technicians be-

lieved that about threequarters of the darn had collapsed, spilling the water into the narrow valley. Policeman’s Story At Ponte nelle Alpi, halfway between Belluno and Longarone, a policeman said the community was under three feet of water, but that as far as he knew there were no serious injuries. “The flood waters hit this place with such speed I’m afraid something terrible must have happened to the places north of here, especially Longarone,” he said. The policeman said that most of Ponte nelle Alpi’s 6000 inhabitants were asleep when the Piave river suddenly crashed over its banks. “Somebody must have seen the flood coming,” he said, “because there were screams and shouts of alarm just before the water hit and lots of people were out of bed when it came.”