A family business tragedy. A man crushed by hundreds of kilos of cheese
Tragedy struck a farm near Bergamo, Italy, on Sunday: The 74-year-old owner of a cheese company was crushed to death by thousands of 40-kilogram parmesan cheese rings.
In the warehouse of the family company founded by Giacomo Chiapparini, approx. 25,000 were ripened. Parmesan cheese rings – each weighing 40 kg. The cheese was stored on shelves, and in some parts of the warehouse the height of the walls created by the cheese reached 10 meters.
The man was crushed by hundreds of kilograms of cheese
According to the daily Il Giorno, a tragedy occurred at Chiapparini’s processing company on Sunday. Witnesses heard a bang coming from the ripening room. As it turned out, the cheese wheels gathered in the warehouse like dominoes and crushed the man.
Rescue teams that reached the crash site received information that the owner of the enterprise was under the heaps of cheese. Only after 12 hours of work, firefighters managed to reach the body of Giacomo Chiapparini.
Investigators are investigating the matter. Probably one of the racks on which Parmesan was ripening was broken. The owner himself may have contributed to this by running a shelf-cleaning machine.
