In a horrific incident, over 18,000 cows died in an explosion leading to a fire at a family dairy farm in the southern US state of Texas, reports said. 

The explosion, which caused the deadliest barn fire in the history of Texas, injured one agricultural worker, authorities said on Thursday.

According to a report in AFP, the explosion and fire ripped through the Southfork Dairy Farms near the town of Dimmitt in the Texas Panhandle on Monday night. 

Reports said that the number of cattle killed in the incident was almost three times the number of cattle slaughtered every day across the US.

Visuals of the incident shared on social media showed a large cloud of black smoke billowing out of the farm. Firefighters and police were rushed to the scene and “determined that one person was trapped inside," the Castro County Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook. The injured person was rescued and rushed to a hospital.

The cause of the explosion and fire was not immediately clear. Officials said that a system to remove manure from the barns may have gotten “overheated."

Officials also said that methane may have “ignited and then spread out with the explosion and the fire." Texas officials are still investigating the real cause of the incident.

The 18,000 cows that died in the accident accounted for about 90 percent of the farm’s total herd, with each cow valued at around $2,000. Officials said they believed that it might impact milk production in the state, according to Wion.

Image Source:- Free Press Journal