Perilous Times
18 people die in 10 days picking mushrooms
Eighteen people have died while mushroom picking in little more than a
week in Italy.
By Nick Squires in Rome
Published: 4:30PM BST 29 Aug 2010
Mushroom picking in Pontremoli, Italy
Collecting wild mushrooms as autumn approaches is an extremely popular
pastime in Italy Photo: CORBIS
The victims have died after falling into rocky crevasses and gorges or
from similar physical mishaps, rather than from inadvertently eating
poisonous fungi.
Authorities said an early and bountiful mushroom harvest in the Alpine
valleys of northern Italy had attracted more people than usual to scour
the woods and forests in search of succulent funghi to bring to the
dinner table.
Many of them were unfit and ill-equipped, venturing into remote areas
without proper footwear or rainproof clothing, and without checking
weather forecasts.
Collecting wild mushrooms as autumn approaches is an extremely popular
pastime in Italy.
Seven of the deaths happened in the Lombardy region while others
occurred in Piedmont, on the border with France, and Trentino-Alto
Adige, adjacent to Austria.
“Lots of people go to areas which are easy to access, but there are
always a few people who want to search out remote bits of woodland
which no one else knows”, Marco Biasoni, a mountain rescuer from
Bolzano, in the north of the country, told Corriere della Sera.
In the most recent case, a 65 year old woman died after falling 40
metres down a steep rocky slope in a forest near the town of Sondrio,
in a mountainous region close to the Swiss border.