State officials confirm Castro County dairy barn fire was accidental
State fire officials have confirmed last week's explosion and fire at a Castro County dairy facility was accidental, caused by malfunctioning equipment.
While the Texas state fire marshal's office investigation into the South Fork Dairy Farm fire is still ongoing, officials released a statement Monday confirming the apparent accidental nature of the explosion and fire that left one woman seriously injured and killed about 18,000 head of cattle. There is no evidence of foul play.
The Monday evening, April 10, fire spread quickly through the holding pens, where thousands of dairy cows crowded together waiting to be milked, trapped in deadly confines, the Globe-News and USA TODAY reported last week.
After subduing the fire at the west Texas dairy farm Monday evening, officials were stunned at the scale of livestock death left behind: 18,000 head of cattle perished in the fire at the South Fork Dairy farm near Dimmitt, Texas – or about 20% of the cattle slaughtered in America on any given day.
A dairy farm worker rescued from inside the structure was taken to a hospital and was in critical but stable condition. There were no other human casualties.
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"It's mind-boggling," Dimmitt Mayor Roger Malone said of the number of bovine deaths. "I don’t think it's ever happened before around here. It's a real tragedy."
It was the biggest single-incident death of cattle in the country since the Animal Welfare Institute, a Washington-based animal advocacy group, began tracking barn and farm fires in 2013.
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That easily surpassed the previous high: a 2020 fire at an upstate New York dairy farm that consumed about 400 cows, said Allie Granger, a policy associate at the institute.
The Texas fire "This is the deadliest fire involving cattle we know of," she said of the Texas incident. "In the past, we have seen fires involving several hundred cows at a time, but nothing anything near this level of mortality."
A malfunction in a piece of farm equipment at the South Fork Dairy farm may have caused an explosion that led to the fire, said County Judge Mandy Gfeller, the county's top executive. Texas fire officials are still investigating the exact cause, she said.
Malone, the mayor, said he wasn't aware of any other fires reported at the facility. He said the dairy had opened in the area just over three years ago and employed between 50 to 60 people.
The owners of South Fork Dairy couldn't be reached for comment.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: State officials confirm Castro County dairy barn fire was accidental
