The fire happened on a farm in Dimmitt, Texas
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
The largest farm fire involving livestock on record in the U.S. killed thousands of Holstein and Jersey cows and injured one employee on a Dimmitt, Texas dairy farm in Castro County.
The fire occurred at South Fork Dairy Farm on Monday night in a building where the cattle stay before being brought in for milking.
It’s estimated between 18,000 and 19,000 cows, or about 90 percent of the farm’s total herd, died in the fire.
That number makes the fire the largest fire involving cattle on record since the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) started tracking farm fires.
“This tragic incident is the deadliest barn fire involving cattle since at least 2013, when AWI began tracking #barnfires,” the organization said on Twitter.
The surviving cattle will stay at a nearby farm also owned by South Fork Dairy.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
But officials are under the impression it started with a piece of equipment.
“It was probably what they call a honey badger, that’s like a vacuum that sucks manure and water out,” Sal Rivera, sheriff of Castro County, told News Channel 10. “It possibly got overheated and probably the methane and things like that ignited and spread out and exploded in the barn.”
The damage is extensive.
Each of the lost cows were worth upwards of $2,000. Plus the farm employed many people in the community.
“The number of animals that were lost and the barn that was lost,” Castro County Judge Mandy Gfeller said, KMAC reported. “I believe that financially it’s just devastating and catastrophic.
The farm “employed citizens of our county, and that could impact those citizens, as far as jobs go, it could impact our tax base for our county and other municipalities and taxing entities,” Gfeller said. “They’re going to have to rebuild in order to be able to sustain that portion.”
The next step will be the cleanup process and disposal of the deceased animals.
According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, “the owner or operator of the property, farm, or facility, is responsible for the disposal in a timely and sanitary manner.
If burying onsite, the carcasses must be buried at least three feet deep and covered with at least three feet of soil. And the GPS location of the burial site should be recorded.
Texas ranks fourth in U.S. dairy production. And Castro County produces the second-most dairy in the state.