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 , leading to the complete destruction of several villages and towns, and 1,917 deaths.