Word: dams
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...night, while most of Longarone's inhabitants slept or watched a soccer game on television, a huge chunk of a nearby mountain called Toe broke loose and fell 650 ft. into the 873-ft.-high Vaiont Dam, 2½ miles from the town. The splash sent a 300-ft.-high tidal wave across the reservoir. Spilling over the lip, the avalanche of water cascaded into a gorge leading to the nearby Piave River. It churned up tons of rock and mud, and hit Longarone. Then the flood bounced off a mountainside, turned around, hit Longarone again, and continued down...
Poking through the scant ruins, Public Works Minister Fiorentino Sullo mourned: "A truly Biblical disaster, like Pompeii." As the dead were stacked in a mass grave, angry Italians demanded an investigation. Before Vaiont Dam was built four years ago, local residents tried to get the hydroelectric project halted on grounds that the surrounding mountains were too avalanche prone. Mount Toe threw down such landslides so regularly that its nickname was "The Walking Mountain." But the government approved the reservoir anyway...
Creeping Warning. Last week, with Italy's Communists eagerly in the forefront, critics asked why the private electric company that constructed the dam before its nationalization a few months ago did not build a retaining wall to hold back Mount Toe. Moreover, loose earth had been creeping down the mountainside for two weeks prior to the disaster; the dam's supervisors had lowered the reservoir level 21 ft. and evacuated some smaller villages above the reservoir. But even though it lay directly in the dam's path, Longarone was not evacuated...
Mills had only to ask if the President would come down to dedicate a new federal dam in his congressional district, and John Kennedy...
...good was the lukewarm reception Kennedy got during his first foray into the South in 4½ months. Since then, the civil rights issue has glowed red-hot. At Greers Ferry Dam and at a Little Rock fair later in the day, the crowds were curious and courteous, but not enthusiastic. And Governor Orval Faubus, who contends that