An Italian cheese producer was crushed to death on Sunday evening in Lombardy (north) by wheels that fell from a broken shelf, which caused the domino effect of the fall of thousands of wheels weighing around forty kilos each, a-t- we learned Monday from the firefighters.
“We had to move the cheeses and shelves by hand. It took about 12 hours to find” the victim on Monday morning, Antonio Dusi, a firefighter in the city of Bergamo, told Agence France-Presse, stressing the “complex” nature of their intervention.
The warehouse, located in the small town of Romano di Lombardia south of Bergamo, contained a total of 25,000 wheels of cheese stored on metal shelves culminating at about ten meters. Thousands fell, killing company owner Giacomo Chiapparini, 74, who worked inside the warehouse.
The emergency services were alerted by the family members of the victim, alarmed by the crash caused by the fall of the wheels of cheese around 9 p.m. local time on Sunday. According to the daily Il Corriere della Sera, the victim was alone in the warehouse, intended to accommodate the wheels during the ripening period and where he had come to control a robot which turns them over and cleans them automatically.
The cheese produced by this company is grana padano, which resembles parmesan and is very popular on the peninsula.