Dam Failure Case Study: Vajont Dam (Italy, 1963)

DamFailures.Org is an ASDSO project that provides individual dam failure case studies and lessons learned as a resource for dam safety engineers, dam operators, owners, regulators, managers, academia and students to help prevent future incidents.

Vajont Dam is a double-curved, thin-arch dam, and at 860 feet high, it remains one of the tallest dams in the world. The dam is 11 feet wide at the crest, 73 feet wide at the base, with a crest length of 623 feet. There are 16 gates on the crest with an underground powerhouse and three outlets in the abutment. The reservoir capacity was designed for 138,000 acre-feet. Vajont was part of an extensive network of dams, powerhouses and tunnels constructed for hydro-electric power generation by the Società Adriatica di Elettricità (SADE). At the time of the incident, ownership had been transferred to ENEL, the national agency of electricity.