In a heartbreaking incident, an Italian man lost his life after being crushed by thousands of huge Parmesan-style hard cheese wheels, AFP said on Monday.
74-year-old Giacomo Chiapparini met with this unfortunate fate when a shelf collapsed in his warehouse located in the northern Lombardy region on Sunday. The devastating chain reaction caused thousands of wheels, each weighing around 40 kilograms, to come tumbling down, as revealed by firefighter Antonio Dusi from Bergamo to AFP.
The warehouse, situated in the small town of Romano di Lombardia near Bergamo, stored a staggering 25,000 wheels of Grana Padano, a popular hard cheese similar to Parmesan, widely cherished in Italy.
Chiapparini was on the premises to inspect the ripening wheels, which were placed on metal shelves — the highest of which stood at 10 metres (33 feet).
According to Dusi, rescuers “had to move the cheeses and the shelves by hand” and that it “took about 12 hours” to finally locate Chiapparini.
