An explosion at South Fork Dairy near the town of Dimmitt in Texas has killed 18,000 cows, leaving one person in critical condition.
Local authorities believe that machinery in the facility may have ignited methane gas, causing the explosion.
According to the Castro County Sheriff’s Office, they had received a report of a fire at the farm at about 19:21 on Monday (00:21 GMT Tuesday).
While the exact figure of cows that were killed by fire and smoke remains unknown, BBC News reported that the Sheriff’s office gave an “estimated 18,000 head of cattle” loss.
Sheriff Sal Rivera said that most of the cattle had been lost after the blaze spread to an area in which cows were held before being taken to a milking area and then into a holding pen.
Rivera said, “There’s some that survived, there’s some that are probably injured to the point where they’ll have to be destroyed.”
He believed the fire might have started with a machine referred to as a “honey badger”, which he described as “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.
In a statement issued by the Washington DC-based Animal Welfare Institute, it said that – if confirmed – a death toll of 18,000 cows would be “by far” the deadliest barn fire involving cattle since it began keeping statistics in 2013.
“We hope the industry will remain focused on this issue and strongly encourage farms to adopt common sense fire safety measures,” said Allie Granger, policy associate for AWI’s farm animal program. “It is hard to imagine anything worse than being burned alive.”
