Individual, collective and institutional responses - where the real heroes stand out and the real villains lurk.

In reading up on Moro, this Italian equivalent of the Johnstown Flood caught my eye.  

From Wikipedia.  

Vajont Dam disaster

During his premiership, Moro had to face the outcome of one of the most tragic events in Italian republican history, the Vajont Dam disaster. On 9 October 1963, a few weeks before his oath as Prime Minister, a landslide occurred on Monte Toc, in the province of Pordenone. The landslide caused a megatsunami in the artificial lake in which 50 million cubic metres of water overtopped the dam in a wave of 250 metres (820 ft), leading to the complete destruction of several villages and towns, and 1,917 deaths.

In the previous months, the Adriatic Society of Electricity (SADE) and the Italian government, which both owned the dam, dismissed evidence and concealed reports describing the geological instability of Monte Toc on the southern side of the basin and other early warning signs reported prior to the disaster.

Immediately after the disaster, government and local authorities insisted on attributing the tragedy to an unexpected and unavoidable natural event. However, numerous warnings, signs of danger, and negative appraisals had been disregarded in the previous months and the eventual attempt to safely control the landslide into the lake by lowering its level came when the landslide was almost imminent and was too late to prevent it. The communist newspaper L'Unità was the first to denounce the actions of management and government. The DC accused the PCI of political profiteering from the tragedy, promising to bring justice to the people killed in the disaster.

Differently from his predecessor, Giovanni Leone, who even became the head of SADE's team of lawyers, Moro acted strongly to condemn the managers of the society, immediately dismissing the administrative officials who had supervised the construction of the dam.

It has its own entry and more detailed history.  I would have said I did not know of the dam or its tragic flooding but seeing a photo in the Wikipedia article, I realize that I have seen some general history documentary which alluded to the tragedy.

The Vajont Dam (or Vaiont Dam) is a disused dam in northern Italy. It is one of the tallest dams in the world, with a height of 262 m (860 feet). It is in the valley of the Vajont River under Monte Toc, in the municipality of Erto e Casso, 100 kilometres (62 mi) north of Venice.

The dam was conceived in the 1920s and eventually built between 1957 and 1960 by Società Adriatica di Elettricità (SADE), at the time the electricity supply and distribution monopoly in northeastern Italy. The engineer was Carlo Semenza (1893–1961). In 1962 the dam was nationalized and came under the control of ENEL as part of the Italian Ministry for Public Works.

On 9 October 1963, during initial filling, a landslide caused a megatsunami in the lake in which 50,000,000 cubic metres (1.8×109 cu ft) of water overtopped the dam in a wave of 250 metres (820 ft), which brought massive flooding and destruction to the Piave Valley below, leading to the destruction of several villages and towns, causing between 1,900 and 2,500 estimated deaths. The dam remained almost intact and two thirds of the water was retained behind it.

This event occurred after ENEL and the Italian government concealed reports and dismissed evidence that Monte Toc, on the southern side of the basin, was geologically unstable. They had disregarded numerous warnings, signs of danger and negative appraisals. Underestimating the size of the landslide, ENEL's attempt to safely control the landslide by lowering the lake's level came when disaster was almost imminent.

It is a useful reminder of two things.  History is only relevant to the extant that it has a competent chronicler.  The comparable Johnstown Flood in the US in 1889 is well known on a limited basis owing to the marvelous account by David McCullough in his first book, The Johnstown Flood (1968).

It appears that while the Vajont Dam Disaster has received TV and documentary coverage in the past couple of decades, that there is no well-written popular account.  

The second thing that it is a reminder of is that major negative events are almost always presaged by earlier events.  People know of the problem, they simply get the attention needed to address it.  Then the problem occurs and most of the powers that be focus on covering up the event, denying that there was any foreknowledge, and blame-shifting to low level people in the drama.  Always and everywhere.  It is an archetype narrative of human events.  

Coincidentally, just yesterday I was in a conversation about some business issue and management's inability to manage its own bog standard business practices in a fashion to forestall problems.  I mentioned that it is common for businesses to try and ignore problems for as long as feasibly possible and for managers to avoid having to take the risks that all initiatives and efforts entail.  

In virtually every after-action or program post-mortem I have ever been involved in or read of, someone always knew about the problem.  The organization just did not want to make the trade-off decisions necessary to rectify the problem.

Disasters are a quintessential part of the human story.  How we, individually, collectively, and institutionally respond is actually the real story.  It is the nexus for the real heroes and the real villains.