Vaiont Dam, 858 ft (262 m) high, on the Vaiont River, a tributary of the Piave River, in Venetia, NE Italy, near Belluno. Vaiont Dam, one of the highest in the world, was completed in 1961 and is used to generate electricity. After heavy rains in 1963, landslides into the Vaiont reservoir caused the stored water to spill over the dam, sweeping away the village of Longarone and flooding nearby hamlets; some 2,000 people drowned.