At a dairy farm in the Texas panhandle, there was a huge blast that killed more than 18,000 cows that were waiting to be milked.
According to USA Today, it was the biggest single death of cattle in the U.S. since the Animal Welfare Institute, a non-profit group in Washington, began keeping track of barn and farm fires 10 years ago. It was a lot more than the 400 cows that died in a fire at a dairy farm in upstate New York in 2020, which was the old record.
Officials said Wednesday that a dairy farmer was also seriously hurt in the explosion at the South Fork Dairy Farm in Dimmitt.
The tweet below shows the video of the Dairy Farm:
JUST IN: 18,000 cows are now dead due to an explosion in Dimmitt, Texas.
Honest question: How does a dairy farm have an explosion so large that it kills 18,000 cows?pic.twitter.com/cQ66IYH3la
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 12, 2023
Around 7 p.m. on Monday, the first rescuers rushed to the farm. They got the worker out of the dairy building that was on fire, but they couldn’t save the animals that were inside.
Officials say that the explosion started a fire that quickly spread to the building where the cows were kept before being moved to a holding pen and the milking area.
The police said that more than 18,000 cows died.
“It’s mind-boggling,” said Roger Malone, the mayor of Dimmitt, about the deaths of the cows. “I don’t think anything like this has ever happened here before. It’s really sad.”
The government is still trying to figure out what caused the blast. Castro Sheriff Salvador Rivera said that officials think it started when a piece of machinery at the dairy farm broke down and caused methane gas to build up and catch fire.
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