Abstract
Hazards in reservoirs and lakes arising from subaerial landslides causing impact waves (or ‘lake tsunamis’) are now well known, with several recent examples having been investigated in detail. The potential scale of such hazards was not widely known at the time of the Vaiont dam project in the 1950s and early 1960s, although a small wave triggered by a landslide at another new reservoir nearby in the Dolomites (northern Italy) drew the possible hazard to the attention of the Vaiont project’s managers. The Vaiont disaster in 1963 arose from a combination of disparate and seemingly unrelated factors and circumstances that led to an occurrence that could not have been imagined at that time. The ultimate cause was a very large landslide moving very rapidly into a reservoir and displacing the water. The resulting wave overtopped the dam to a height of around 175 m and around 2000 people were killed. This paper identifies and examines all of the issues surrounding the Vaiont dam and landslide in order to identify causal factors, contributory factors (including aggravating factors) and underlying factors. In doing so, it demonstrates that the disaster arose from the Vaiont dam project and cannot be attributed simply to the landslide. Underlying geological factors gave rise to the high speed of the landslide, which would have occurred anyway at some time. However, without the contributory factors that account for the presence of the reservoir, i.e. the choice of location for the project and management of the project with respect to a possible landslide hazard, there would have been no disaster. Indeed, the disaster could have been avoided if the reservoir could have been emptied pending further ground investigations. Understanding of this case provides many lessons for future dam projects in mountainous locations but also highlights an ongoing and perhaps under-appreciated risk from similar events involving other water bodies including geologically recent lakes formed behind natural landslide dams.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers, one of whom took the time to highlight many small details that required further attention from us, resulting in this improved manuscript. We have both, at various times over many years, visited Vaiont with Italian as well as other international colleagues: APD acknowledges fieldwork assistance from S. Devoto, E. Forte and F. Podda (all then Univ. of Trieste) and onsite discussions with members of the 50th Anniversary Conference fieldtrip to Vaiont including M. Ghirotti and M. Soldati. ENB acknowledges, among others, Prof L. Coppola (formerly of Potenza University), A. Pasuto and S. Silvano from CNR-IRPI (Padova), M.G. Angeli and P. Gasparetto (formerly of CNR-IRPI, Perugia) and N. Casagli from the University of Firenze. Despite disagreeing with his fundamental hypothesis, the late E. Sememza’s views were an important feature in our work. Mr W.G.H. Hodges, who taught ENB at Portsmouth, had been employed by the company that installed the abutment anchors. He was sent to reconnoitre the failure immediately after it happened in 1963, which he did by walking from Belluno even though disabled. His contemporary glass-plate slides (sadly now lost) were shown to ENB and his fellow students, provoking an interest that has lasted half a century.
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Dykes, A.P., Bromhead, E.N. Hazards from lakes and reservoirs: new interpretation of the Vaiont disaster. J. Mt. Sci. 19, 1717–1737 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-021-7098-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-021-7098-3