Photo: Castro County Sheriff's Office
More than 18,000 cows were killed in an explosion that happened at a Texas dairy farm on Monday (April 10), KFDA reports. The explosion at the South Fork Dairy Plant in Dimmitt, which also left one person critically injured, is now under investigation by the Texas State Fire Marshal. The injured person was flown to UMC Hospital in Lubbock and remains in critical condition as of Tuesday.
"It was very big, I was north of Dimmitt and was able to see it heading this way, coming to the location you could tell the magnitude of it, it was really big. I've seen buildings fully engulfed with fire and smoke, it was just big," Castro County Sheriff Sal Rivera said about the fire at the plant, which has about 60 employees. While the cause of the fire remains unknown, Rivera said he believes it was due to insulation catching fire and spreading. What made the fire so big, however, is part of the investigation.
Only a small percentage of cows survived the explosion, KFDA reports. The cattle that survived were moved to a separate facility with the same owner. The fire from the explosion "spread to the building where they haul cattle before bringing them into the milking area and into a holding pen," Rivera said.
"Your count probably is close to that. There's some that survived, there's some that are probably injured to the point where they'll have to be destroyed," Rivera said.
This marks the deadliest barn fire for cattle overall, according to the Animal Welfare Institute. It's also the most devastating barn fire in Texas since the institute began tracking barn fires in 2013. "We hope the industry will remain focused on this issue and strongly encourage farms to adopt commonsense fire safety measures. It is hard to imagine anything worse than being burned alive," a spokesperson for the AWI said.