18,000 Cows Killed in Explosion, Fire at Texas Dairy Farm
April 13th, 2023Via: USA Today:
The fire spread quickly through the holding pens, where thousands of dairy cows crowded together waiting to be milked, trapped in deadly confines.
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 as of Tuesday. There were no other human casualties.
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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.
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.
18000 bovinians? That seems almost impossible even if that was the goal. And I wonder if it was?
Yep, even if it was the goal, it seems impossible.