EDITOR'S NOTE: Like 25 News in Waco, ABC 7 in Amarillo is an ABC affiliate.
By Jamie Burch, ABC 7 News
DIMMITT, Texas (KVII) — Roughly 18,000 cows were killed in an explosion and fire at the South Fork Dairy near Dimmitt.
The explosion happened around 7:20 p.m. Monday.
Castro County Sheriff Sal Rivera said close to 18,000 cows died.
"This is by far the deadliest barn fire for cattle overall and the most devastating barn fire in Texas since we began tracking barn fires in 2013," said Margie Fishman with the Animal Welfare Institute.
=====
LINK TO ABC 7 NEWS ORIGINAL STORY
=====
Nearly 6.5 million animals have been killed in barn fires since 2013, according to the Animal Welfare Institute.
Just 7,385 of those were cows.
=====
RELATED STORIES:
Castro County Sheriff on dairy explosion fire: 'We were very fortunate'
Person in critical condition, unknown number of cows dead after explosion, fire at dairy
1 hospitalized after loud explosion, fire at South Fork Dairy near Dimmitt
=====
AWI said no federal laws in the United States specifically protect farm animals from barn fires, and only a few states have adopted the National Fire Protection Association’s Fire and Life Safety in Animal Housing Facilities Code, which establishes safety requirements for animals in barns and other types of housing.
Texas is not one of those states, according to NFPA’s database.
“We hope the industry will remain focused on this issue and strongly encourage farms to adopt common sense fire safety measures,” said Allie Granger, policy associate for AWI’s farm animal program. “It is hard to imagine anything worse than being burned alive.”
The blast and fire also injured a woman in the dairy milking building.
She was taken to UMC in Lubbock in critical condition.
The State Fire Marshal’s Office determined "a piece of machinery" caused the fire, according to Rivera.
