A massive explosion at a Texas dairy farm has killed some 18,000 cows, Fox News reports. 

The explosion has also left one person critically injured.

The incident, which occurred on Monday, took place at the Southfork Dairy Farm in Dimmitt, Texas. Video of the aftermath of the explosion has been circulating on social media. Here's one such video:

🚨#UPDATE: Mass Casaulty Incident has declared after explosion at dairy farm in Dimmitt, Texas. So far one person is in critical condition at this time with information being very limited this was moments after the explosion that took place#SouthForkDairy#CastroCounty… pic.twitter.com/R5GjvUMHN5

— LockharTVMedia (@LockharTVMedia) April 11, 2023

What we know:

According to the Castro County Sheriff’s Office, the explosion occurred on Monday evening, when the cows were placed into a holding area for milking. The sheriff's office says that the vast majority of the cows in the holding area died as a result of the blast.

"There’s some that survived, there’s some that are probably injured to the point where they’ll have to be destroyed," Castro County Sheriff Sal Rivera said.

On Monday evening, when the police received emergency calls following the explosion, they were told that there were people trapped inside the farm's milking building. When they arrived, however, they found that only one woman was in the building.

That individual, after being rescued from the building, was airlifted to the UMC Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, which is about 80 miles from the site of the explosion.

The woman was in critical condition. It is unclear, at the time of this writing, whether she is expected to survive.

What caused the explosion?

According to ABC7, the answer appears to be a piece of machinery that was on the farm.

Rivera has said:

The speculation was probably what they call a honey badger, which is a vacuum that sucks the manure and water out and possibly that it got overheated and probably the methane and things like that ignited and spread out and exploded and the fire.

The Animal Welfare Institute has released a statement suggesting that this event is the most deadly of its kind, for cattle, in history.

"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," the Animal Welfare Institute's Margie Fishman said.

According to the Institute, 6.5 million animals have been killed in barn fires since 2013.