Tunnel 180 - Genna Arenas dirt road D-306A

The trail in memory of four female mine workers who died on 18 March 1913

It was just after 7 on a cold late winter morning when a group of nine young female ore sorters were sorting a large amount of run of mine from the Malfidano mine. With them, three men were also performing the hard task of sorting the stones, rich in lead and zinc oxides, always under the close supervision of mine supervisor Eugenio Berutto. The ore sorting bench was placed under large hoppers made of huge wooden planks covered with sheet metal. Their usual creaking noise gave no warning of the imminent tragedy.

Suddenly, one of the large hoppers broke open and the heap of mined stones it contained thundered down from above on the long workbench where the young women were working. The day was 18 March 1913. Buried under the pile of stones, Anna Pinna, age 23, Laurina Lussana, age 19, Maria Angela Saiu, age 35, and Anna Murgia, age 15, died. Sorters Assunta Algisi, aged 18, Mariangela Zoccheddu, aged 33, and 14-year-old worker Luigi Caddeo, on the other hand, were seriously injured. They escaped death, however. To commemorate the sacrifice of the four women who worked in the small processing plant at Genn’Arenas, above the current town of Buggerru, for the meagre daily wage of 80 cents, five years ago, the former Forest Entity (Ente Foreste) of Sardinia, together with the municipality of Buggerru, created the Cammino delle Cernitrici (Trail of the Sorters). 

by Federico Matta (Read more https://sulcisiglesienteoggi.com/buggerru-il-sacrificio-delle-cernitrici-di-gennarenas/)