A 74-year-old cheesemaker was killed by his creation after more than a thousand cheese wheels fell, trapping him.
Giacomo Chiapparini makes Grana Padano, a type of hard cheese that is similar to Parmesan, NBC News reported.
He was at his cheese-aging warehouse in northern Italy where he stores 15,000 cheese wheels when a 30-foot-high shelf holding them collapsed, burying Chiapparini.
Each wheel of cheese weighs about 40 pounds, The Washington Post reported and is aged between 12 and 70 months.
Officials said it was a “domino effect,” CNN reported.
A piece of machinery that cleans and rotates the wheels sent an alarm to Chiapparini saying there was an issue so he and his son went to adjust the cheese. Chipparini’s son left the warehouse while his father restarted the machine. A moment later his son heard a crash and saw his father crushed under the wheels.
A fire crew that usually responds to earthquakes arrived at the scene quickly, but it took hours to move each wheel by hand until they found Chiapparini’s body after about 11 hours, NBC News and CNN reported.
The authorities are trying to determine why the shelving collapsed, NBC News reported.
The accident has cost the company about $7.7 million in damages and local cheesemakers are trying to help move the cheese to storage before it all becomes moldy, the Post and Il Giorno reported.
