Cheesemaker in Italy fatally crushed by thousands of wheels of cheese
An Italian man died when he was crushed by thousands of wheels of cheese at his warehouse on Sunday, authorities said.
Cheesemaker Giacomo Chiapparini, 74, was buried by thousands wheels of Grana Padano, a Parmesan-style hard cheese popular in Italy, according to reports. The incident happened when a shelf broke in his factory’s warehouse, which holds a total of 25,000 wheels of cheese. Each cheese wheel weighed about 40kg, or nearly 90 pounds.
It took emergency responders about 12 hours to find Chiapparini’s body, BBC News reports.
“When we got there, the whole warehouse was full of cheese wheels on top of one another,” said Daniele Retto, a spokesperson for the local fire brigade department, according to NBC News. “We had to call the unit that specializes in the search and rescue of people under the rubble, especially after an earthquake. They spent hours moving the wheels by hand, one by one, and found his body only in the morning.”
A local resident told Italian media the cheese wheels’ collapse sounded “like thunder,” per BBC.
Bortolo Ghislotti, a friend of Chiapparini, said the cheesemaker’s son, Tiziano, had left the warehouse just moments before the incident.
“Tiziano told me he heard a massive noise, he turned around and saw his father buried under thousands of cheese wheels,” Ghislotti told NBC News. “He knows that if he got out seconds later, he would be dead too.”
..