An explosion at a Texas dairy farm resulted in a fire that killed over 18,000 cows. Reportedly, one person was severely wounded in the incident.
The total number of killed animals is approximately three times higher than the daily number of cattle brought to slaughter in the US, as first reported by USA Today.
According to Allie Granger, a policy associate at the organization, this figure greatly exceeded the previous record in 2020, when a fire at a dairy farm in upstate New York killed almost 400 cows.
'Real Tragedy'
In an article by The Straits Times, Dimmitt Mayor Roger Malone, the nearest town to the South Fork Dairy farm, referred to the number of fatalities as "mindboggling" and said that the event was a "real tragedy."
Castro County is characterized by broad grassland terrain and is populated with dairy farms and cow ranches, where the fire started.
County Judge Mandy Gfeller, the county's top executive, has speculated that a failure in a piece of equipment at the South Fork farm may have produced an explosion that led to the fire. She said that authorities in Texas had yet to determine what caused the tragedy.
Mayor Malone said he had no prior knowledge of any fires on the premises. He went on to say that the dairy farm had been operating in the region for around three years with employees of between 50 and 60 individuals.
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The Damages
On Monday, April 10, the fire is alleged to have spread fast through the holding pens, where thousands of dairy cows were gathered. Later that day, once firefighters had contained the blaze, the devastating scope of what had happened became clear.
One person working on a dairy farm was saved and sent to the hospital. The worker was reported to be in critical but stable condition on Tuesday, April 12.
Images of the event, depicting a massive column of black smoke, circulated online. There were also pictures of burned cows rescued from the building.
There were reportedly 18,000 cows on the property, or around 90% of the whole herd, that died. Each one was worth around $2,000. Gfeller estimated that the company's livestock losses might total in the tens of millions of dollars.
This tragedy will also impact the milk supply.
Approximately 625,000 cows in Texas generate almost 7.5 billion kilograms of milk annually, making the state the fourth-highest producer in the US, as reported by the Texas Association of Dairymen.
Castro County is the state's second most productive municipality. There are 15 dairies in the area, and the US Department of Agriculture estimates that they together produce roughly 67,000kg of milk each month.
Not the First Time
According to The Straits Times, this is not the first time a huge number of cattle were killed in Texas. This level of casualties is unusual for fires, though.
The Texas Association of Dairymen estimates 20,000 cattle died in a snowstorm in December 2015. During Hurricane Harvey in 2017, thousands of farm animals in southeast Texas perished.
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