Texas dairy farm explosion kills 18,000 cows and critically injures one person

An explosion at a dairy farm in the Texas Panhandle is the deadliest barn fire recorded since the Animal Welfare Institute began tracking the fires. Photo / Castro County Sheriff's Office via Facebook

An explosion at a dairy farm in the Texas Panhandle that critically injured one person and killed an estimated 18,000 head of cattle is the deadliest barn fire recorded since the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) began tracking the fires.

Castro County Sheriff Salvador Rivera has said the fire and explosion at Southfork Dairy Farm near Dimmitt were likely caused by overheated equipment and would be investigated by state fire marshals.

“This is a devastating loss that will impact many,” Castro County Judge Mandy Gfeller told CNN.

“While the loss of so many animals and property is devastating I am so thankful that there was no loss of human life. I am praying for restoration for South Fork Dairy.”

Allie Granger, policy associate for AWI’s farm animal programme, said: “We hope the industry will remain focused on this issue and strongly encourage farms to adopt commonsense fire safety measures. It is hard to imagine anything worse than being burned alive.”

AWI spokeswoman Marjorie Fishman said this “would be the most deadly fire involving cattle in the past decade” - since they started tracking that in 2013.

The institute also tracks barn fires that kill other livestock, including poultry, pigs, goats and sheep.

“The deadliest barn fire overall since we began tracking in 2013 ... was a fire ... at Hi-Grade Egg Producers North, Manchester, Indiana, which killed 1 million chickens,” according to Fishman.

A 2022 report by the institute noted “several instances in which 100,000 to 400,000 chickens were killed in a single fire”.

A phone call to South Fork Dairy rang unanswered on Thursday (local time).

A spokesperson for the state insurance department, which oversees the fire marshals’ office, said only that the fire is under investigation and referred questions to Rivera, who did not immediately return phone calls for comment.

Insurance department spokesman Gardner Selby declined comment on the injured person’s condition.

Dimmitt is about 80km southwest of Amarillo and about the same distance east of the New Mexico border.