Italian dairy factory owner dies, crushed by 25,000 wheels of cheese
- Giacomo Chiapparini was buried under the cheeses when a shelf broke in his warehouse, creating a domino effect which brought down thousands of wheels
- The wheels of Grana Padano, a hard cheese that resembles Parmesan, weigh roughly 40 kilograms (88 pounds) each
All night, rescuers tried to save the man from under the masses of hard Grana Padano cheese, each wheel weighing 40 kilograms (88 pounds).
Giacomo Chiapparini, 74, was buried under the cheeses when a shelf broke in his warehouse creating a domino effect which brought down the cheeses, firefighter Antonio Dusi said.
Rescuers “had to move the cheeses and the shelves by hand”, Dusi said, adding that it “took about 12 hours” to finally find Chiapparini.
The man was working on Sunday evening in the warehouse of his dairy factory in the small town not far from Milan when one of the metal shelves on which the large cheese wheels were ripening collapsed.
Quickly, the high shelves, reaching to the ceiling and stacked to the brim with cheese, fell one after the other until they buried the man, said the spokesman.
