One of the dates to remember in HEP's history is certainly January 28. On this day in 1993, at 10.48 am, the attempt to demolish the Peruća Dam was prevented.
All the black scenarios of possible events on the Dam, in the power plant and its surroundings began as early as September 17, 1991 when the enemy occupied the dam facilities and the power house and planted more than 20 tons of explosives in the grouting gallery and the spillway. For a year and a half we hoped for the best outcome but also feared a disaster. Even knowing that the dam had been supervised by UNPROFOR, which took a full responsibility for everything related to the Dam, from July 1992. However, on January 27, 1993 the chetniks returned to the Dam and re-occupied it, and a day later, on that fateful January 28, the international forces abandoned it. At that decisive moment, the Croatian Army, in a direct armed conflict, managed to chase the enemy away, who, while retreating, activated the explosives. Although the Dam suffered considerable damage, the crazy plan to demolish it all was prevented: “It looked like a wounded beauty. The water started to break into it, eating away its ‘womb’, threatening with its collapse. Nobody was thinking at that time about those who did it evil but how to help it,” said then, among other things, the director of the Peruća hydro power plant Josip Macan. And the help came, fast and efficient. In early August that year, phase one began to reconstruct the inspection tunnel of the Dam and the tunnel at its foot, and in late May of 1996, the dam was fully reconstructed. It was the start of a new life for the Dam on which the operation of the power plants of our most significant basin, that of the Cetina River, depends; in 2010 these power plants hit their all-time record production!
