Together with wars and invasions the region was hit by environmental disasters, provoked by the Piave which changed his course several times in the past. In the history of our region an important event was the flood of 589 two decades after the invasion of Longobards. Paolo Diacono reports the flood in his 2nd book of the "Historia Langobardarum" at chapter 23: in that time there was a deluge in the lands of Venice, Liguria and other regions of Italy never so big since the times of Noah. Lands and farms became lakes and there was a large number of deads among human beings and animals. Streets and paths were cancelled and the Adige swelled so much that the water almost reached the upper windows of the basilica of the Blessed Martyr Zenone, which is out of the walls of Verona; but according to what the blessed Gregory wrote, who was to become later Pope, no water went into the Church. The walls of Verona were in some points damaged by the flood. This happened on the 23rd of October. There followed lightnings and thunders hardly to be heard in Summer. Verona was half destroyed after two months in a fire.
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Wladimiro Dorigo in the book "Venezie sepolte nella terra del Piave", page 106 (Rome 1994), wrote that the catastrophic flood of the 23rd of October 589, which probably changed the courses of rivers like the Adige, had a tremendous effect on the hydraulic structure of the territory. The flood was not isolated; according to other certain sources it happened within an extremely difficult climatic period which sees the presence of a series of floods. Dorigo indicates from 389 (the time of Teodosio) to 886 (just before the coronation of Berengario I) a dozen of dates of similar phenomena which left memories of incredible death and destruction. The months most reminded for the floods (October and November) reveal the nature of autumnal swollen rivers and bring us to the catastrophic events of the last decades.
Other historians report less detailed information about the flood events, though they tell about the damages provoked by the waters in the lands around Jesolo.
Giorgio Piloni in his "Historia di Belluno" (1607), reports the flood of 1512 when the Piave flooded also Treviso: "The rivers swelled for the great rains this year and flooded with serious damages in all the region; they ruined bridges, trees were uprooted and the countryside was ruined. And the Piave horribly swollen went out of his bed and flowing towards Treviso entered the town breaking the bridge of Bethlehem". Most important are the causes of the flood according to the author; it looks like the report of a nowadays researcher: "the cause of the flood is well known by everyone, when trees are cut and woods in the mountains uprooted, when the ground is digged, the waters of the rain do not stop and flow down carrying mud into the creeks and from there to the river Piave, which swelling with water and mud floods out of its bed and damages the lands around until it reaches the lagoon of Venice and silts up the ponds and canals of that town. This did not happen in ancient times for the mountains were not cultivated and waters flew clear between leaves and grass, slowly and in less quantity".
