As many as 18,000 dairy cows were killed and one person was critically injured during a possible explosion and fire in Texas, officials said Tuesday.
The incident occurred at the South Fork Dairy Farm located in Dimmit, Texas, the Castro County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. Officials say the cause of the fire is still under investigation.
“Upon arrival it was determined that one person was trapped inside and fire crews were able to locate the person and remove them from the building,”
said the Castro County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday. “The person was flown to the UMC Hospital in Lubbock. All employees were accounted for.”
Castro County Sheriff Salvador Rivera
told local media that witnesses saw “an explosion that spread into a fire and spread into the building where the dairy cattle are held.” He noted that only a small number of cows survived.
“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,” he
said. While some reports indicated that an explosion triggered the fire, Rivera
told AgFax that it’s not clear what sparked the blaze.
Dimmit’s mayor, Roger Malone, estimated to USA Today that around 18,000 cows died in the incident. “How do you dispose of 18,000 carcasses?” he asked. “That’s something you just don’t run into very much.”
“It’s mind-boggling,” he added. “I don’t think it’s ever happened before around here. It’s a real tragedy.”
According to the Animal Welfare Institute, the explosion appears to be the largest mass casualty incident involving cattle in U.S. history, or at least since the group started tracking mass animal deaths. The previous high occurred in 2020 at an upstate New York farm in which 400 cows died, Allie Granger, a policy associate at the institute, told USA Today.
The Texas explosion and fire “is the deadliest fire involving cattle we know of,” she
told the outlet. “In the past, we have seen fires involving several hundred cows at a time, but nothing anything near this level of mortality.”
A spokesperson for Castro County Sheriff’s office told The Epoch Times earlier this week that the cause of the explosion is still under investigation. South Fork Dairy Farm couldn’t be reached for comment.
“The speculation was probably what they call a honey badger, which is a vacuum that sucks the manure and water out and possibly that it got overheated and probably the methane and things like that ignited and spread out and exploded and the fire,” Rivera
told local news outlet KSAT-TV.
There has been speculation that recent fires and explosions at other facilities, including food processing plants, are attacks on critical U.S. infrastructure. An EpochTV investigation
published last year found that most incidents cited of facilities allegedly catching fire in 2022 didn’t occur that year. Many were instead lumped in from previous years.
But last year, the FBI’s Cyber Division issued a warning about potential cyberattacks on agricultural cooperatives and food plants amid increasing media coverage of recent fires and explosions across the United States.
“Ransomware actors may be more likely to attack agricultural cooperatives during critical planting and harvest seasons, disrupting operations, causing financial loss, and negatively impacting the food supply chain,” the FBI’s notice
said, adding that ransomware attacks in 2021 and early 2022 could disrupt the planting season by targeting “the supply of seeds and fertilizer.”
“A significant disruption of grain production could impact the entire food chain, since grain is not only consumed by humans but also used for animal feed. In addition, a significant disruption of grain and corn production could impact commodities trading and stocks,” it added.
Jana Pruet contributed to this report.
