More than 18,000 cows died in a “horrific” explosion and fire at a dairy farm in west Texas, authorities said on Thursday.
One worker was injured by the explosion. The person was rescued and flown to a hospital in Lubbock, CNN reported.
The cause of the explosion and fire that ripped through the Southfork Dairy Farms near the town of Dimmitt in the Texas Panhandle is being investigated.
“This was the deadliest barn fire for cattle in Texas history and the investigation and cleanup may take some time,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement.
“Once we know the cause and the facts surrounding this tragedy, we will make sure the public is fully informed — so tragedies like this can be avoided in the future,” he said.
Authorities have not been able to contact members of the family who own the farm in one of Texas’ biggest milk production counties, the report states.
The fire prompted calls from the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), among the oldest U.S. animal protection groups, for federal laws to prevent barn fires which kill hundreds of thousands of farm animals each year.
There are no federal regulations protecting animals from fires and only a few states, Texas not among them, have adopted fire protection codes for such buildings, according to an AWI statement.
The blaze was the most devastating U.S. barn fire involving cattle since the AWI began tracking such incidents in 2013. Around 6.5 million farm animals have died in such fires in the last decade, most of them poultry.
