Sixty years have passed since the Vajont catastrophe. The visit of President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella to the disaster sites celebrated today's memorial of October 9, 1963, when 1,910 people died in what is remembered as one of the worst disasters in Italian history. The president first laid a wreath this morning at the monumental cemetery of Fortogna, in the province of Belluno, where the victims of the dam collapse are buried. The children of Bergamo's Monterosso Choir and Rovereto's Montemagia association then sung songs while holding signs with the names of the 487 young people who died in the tragedy. Then, on the Friulian side, second stop in the square in front of the dam, in the municipality of Erto and Casso, for a brief institutional ceremony in which, in addition to Mattarella, governors of Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia, Luca Zaia and Massimiliano Fedriga, spoke. "A landslide, the disappearance into thin air of an environment, a territory, and a large number of people. The annihilation of life. These are torments that still disturb and question consciences sixty years later," Mattarella stated to the audience. "Today, we want to imagine that we are mirrored first and foremost in the eyes of those who are no longer here; who were no longer there when the Alpines arrived. In the eyes of rescuers. In the solemn expressions of the survivors. In the eyes of people who are now the depositaries of these areas. To be able to say that the Republic has not forgotten," the Quirinale occupant concluded. The president insisted heavily on the environment, echoing what Fedriga and Zaia had said before him. "A human intervention that translates into prevarication corresponds to natural violence," Mattarella said. "The Vajont disaster was compared to that caused by the displacement of air caused by the explosion of a nuclear device," he concluded. "The tragedy that occurred here bears the weight of grave human responsibilities, of grave choices that were denounced by observant individuals even before the disaster occurred. Providing a secure framework for our society requires understanding how to learn from the realities and move forward."
|