Grader's path (D-306)

WARNING: The route and signs are being checked. ROUTE IS PENDING REGISTRATION.

Risk factors to watch out for

The route does not cross any areas owned by IGEA (*). Instead, it crosses the Malfidano Mining Concession and runs along mining structures such as tunnels, mine shafts, excavations and mine waste dumps. 
Hazards found in the areas outside the trail are the mining waste dumps, the tunnels themselves, the mine shafts and mining excavations. The risk factors related to these structures are: material collapse, falling inside the shafts or excavations, and ingestion or skin contact with the mine waste materials.
Rules of conduct to be observed:

• do not stray from the marked path 
• along the route, do not force open or tamper with the fences and gates around nearby mining structures,
• respect the safety signs on mining structures
• do not go near and/or enter unfenced mining structures.

(*) After the Ente Minerario Sardo (Sardinia Mining Agency) was dissolved by Regional Law 33/1998, IGEA was appointed to manage the activities for the safety, environmental restoration and remediation of abandoned or soon to be closed mining areas and facilities, in accordance with the policies and guidance from its sole shareholder, the Autonomous Region of Sardinia (Department of Industry).

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/)