After firefighters from ten regional departments finally extinguished the blaze in Dimmitt, Texas, the scene they found was horrific: charred corpses littered the ground. After discussion, the first responders brought in heavy equipment to move the bodies instead of doing their first instinct: ordering gallons of Heinz 57.
The Monday fire at the South Fork Dairy Farm killed more than 18,000 head of cattle, easily surpassing the previous deadliest livestock fire in US history: a 2020 blaze in upstate New York that cost 400 cattle. The number of dairy cows lost equals the number of beef cattle slaughtered for meat every three days in the United States, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
Caused by the explosion of methane from cow burps sparked by a malfunctioning piece of equipment in a barn, the fire injured one human. In infamously regulation-free Texas, there was no word on when the last time the farm had been the subject of a safety inspection for a commercial property.