On Tuesday, April 11, as many as 18000 cows were killed after a fire began following a blast at the South Fork Dairy farm in Dimmitt in Texas. According to reports, the cows were huddled together in a holding pen, waiting to be milked, when the explosion occurred. The incident has marked the deadliest barn fire on record in the USA.
The Castro County Sheriff’s Office took to Facebook to share images of flames rushing through a facility and into holding pens. According to the Sheriff’s office, firefighters rescued one person who was trapped inside the burning building.
The source of the fire is still unknown, and the farm’s owners have yet to comment on the occurrence.
HORRIFYING! At least 18,000 individuals were killed in an explosion at a dairy farm in Texas. With no way out, they burned to death. #nomorefactoryfarms #MILK pic.twitter.com/leH6HHXyaO
— Direct Action Everywhere (@DxEverywhere) April 13, 2023
Locals reported hearing a huge boom and seeing massive pillars of smoke for kilometres, the Independent reported citing KFDA News Channel 10. The black smoke could be seen for kilometres and even from nearby towns. “It was crazy,” Dimmitt resident Kennedy Cleraman told KFDA. “There was a big, massive, black air and it looked like fog in the street. And it was all burnt- the place.”
Sheriff Sal Rivera told local news source KFDA that the majority of the livestock perished when the fire moved to an area where cows were confined before being taken to a milking facility and then into a holding enclosure.
“There’s some that survived,” he was quoted as saying. “There’s some that are probably injured to the point where they’ll have to be destroyed.”
Rivera told KFDA that investigators believed the fire might have started with a machine referred to as a “honey badger”, which he described as a “vacuum that sucks the manure and water out”.
“Possibly it got overheated and probably the methane and things like that ignited and spread out and exploded,” he said.
South Fork Dairy Farm is located in Castro County, one of Texas’s highest dairy-producing counties. According to Texas’ 2021 Annual Dairy Review, Castro County has more than 30,000 cattle. The occurrence is the largest single-incident livestock death since the Animal Welfare Institute, an animal advocacy group, began documenting barn fires.
