Texas: More than 18,000 cows died in Texas after an explosion and fire occurred at Southfork Dairy Farms, a family dairy farm on Tuesday. The incident marks the deadliest barn fire on record in the US, said a Reuters report. The cause of the fire is still unknown and the family who owns the farm has not made any remarks on the incident so far.
The explosion, at South Fork Dairy near the town of Dimmitt, also left one person in critical condition.
Authorities believe that machinery in the facility may have ignited methane gas.
Nearly three million farm animals died in fires across the US between 2018 and 2021.
Castro County Sheriff’s Office said they had received a report of a fire at the farm at about 19:21 on Monday (00:21 GMT Tuesday).
Photos posted by the Sheriff’s Office show a huge plume of black smoke rising from the ground.
When police and emergency personnel arrived at the scene, they found one person trapped who had to be rescued and flown to hospital in critical condition.
All roads leading to the farm have been closed for public health and safety.
The massive fire prompted the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), among the oldest US animal protection groups, to call for federal laws to prevent barn fires which kill hundreds of thousands of farm animals each year.
Only a few US states have adopted fire protection codes for such buildings and there are no federal regulations protecting animals from such fires, said Reuters quoting AWI.
The blaze at the Texas farm was the most devastating US barn fire involving cattle since the AWI began tracking such incidents in 2013. Around 6.5 million farm animals have died in such fires in the last decade, most of them poultry.
