Europe 1 with AFP 16:20 pm, August 07, 2023

In Lombardy, northern Italy, a 74-year-old Italian cheesemaker lost his life after being crushed by his own cheeses. Several thousand grinding wheels fell from a shelf after it broke.

An Italian cheese producer died crushed Sunday night in Lombardy (Italy) by wheels fallen from a shelf that broke, which caused by domino effect the fall of thousands of wheels of forty kilos each, we learned, this Monday, August 7, from the firefighters. "We had to move the cheeses and shelves by hand. It took about 12 hours to find" the victim, this Monday morning, explained to AFP Antonio Dusi, a fire official of the city of Bergamo, stressing the "complex" nature of their intervention.

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25,000 wheels of cheese

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 rising to about ten meters. Thousands of them fell, killing the company's owner, 74-year-old Giacomo Chiapparini, who worked inside the warehouse.

The emergency services were alerted by members of the victim's family, alarmed by the crash caused by the fall of the cheese wheels around 21:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 6. 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 check a robot that turns them over and cleans them automatically. The cheese produced by this company is Grana Padano, which resembles Parmesan and is very popular in the peninsula.