Italian man gets crushed to death by thousands of wheels of hard cheese

The boss of an Italian cheese company has died after thousands of wheels of cheese buried him in his factory.

Giacomo Chiapparini was working on Sunday night in the warehouse of his factory in the small town of Romano di Lombardia near Bergamo in northern Italy, which is not far from Milan.

One of the metal shelves on which the large cheese wheels were ripening collapsed and fell on top of him.

This caused a domino effect leading to the wheels, which each weighed around 40 kilos, to fall down on top of him and bury the cheesemaker.

The Daily Mail says an estimated 15,000 wheels fell over during the accident.

MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images

The 75-year-old was inspecting the ripening wheels of Grana Padano, which is similar to Parmigiano Reggiano, when the incident happened.

A factory worker who was outside the warehouse at around 9pm local time heard a loud noise and called for help.

Firefighters and police officers raced to the scene and 118 rescuers, made up of firefighters and paramedics, worked through the night to find the body of the cheesemaker.

Firefighter Antonio Dusi from Bergamo told AFP the rescuers spent 12 hours moving 'the cheeses and the shelves by hand' before the cheesemaker's body was finally found at around 9am on Monday.

It's not clear how the first metal shelf collapsed, though material fatigue or a technical fault are suspected to be the cause.

There will be a full investigation into the incident.

Bortolo Ghislotti, president of the local agricultural district, told Italian news outlet Il Giorno the machine used to automatically clean the cheese may have malfunctioned, causing the avalanche.

Ghislotti said the family were now working to save the cheese before it spoils in the heat.

“The family, his wife Angela and two children, cannot understand what happened,” Ghislotti told the publication.

“But now we are looking for some colleague willing to keep all the wheels… which otherwise would have to be thrown out.”

Ghislotti also estimated that the economic damage from the accident could sit around $7.7 million.

Chiapparini had been making the popular cheese since 2006.