“The tragedy that took place here carries the weight of grave human responsibility, of very bad choices denounced by attentive people even before the disaster occurred,” said Mattarella.
The president was speaking at a ceremony at Vajont on the border between Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia to mark the anniversary of the landslide above the dam that sent a huge wave of water over the crest, destroying the villages in the valley below.
Officially 1910 people, including 487 minors under the age of 15, died in the disaster that had been preceded by numerous warnings of impending danger thar were largely ignored.
“The Vajont disaster has been compared to one caused by the displacement of air resulting from a nuclear explosion,” said Mattarella, adding that “we are here to commemorate … those who died on October 9, 1963” as well as the “survivors, those who had to leave their homes and those who struggled strenuously to rebuild them, to remain here”.
The president spoke of the “silent monuments to the victims, those buried in the cemeteries, those buried forever in the riverbeds, on the mountainsides.
“Women, men, children. Five hundred children.”
“Sixty years on, these are torments that continue to disturb and question our consciences,” said Mattarella.
“General Giampaolo Agosto, then a young officer in the Sixth Mountain Artillery Regiment who intervened with his men in the hours immediately after the tragedy, recalled recently that in the face of so much horror, his soldiers had an empty look in their eyes,” continued the president.
“Let us strive, today, to imagine ourselves mirrored first of all in the eyes of those who are no longer here; who, when the Alpine troops arrived, were no longer there.
“In the eyes of the rescuers. In the stern looks of the survivors. In the eyes of those who are here today, custodians of these territories.
“In this way, we can say that the Republic has not forgotten,” he concluded.
ANSA
