Explosions rock Utrecht, with buildings damaged and multiple people injured

[palestine]

https://www.sott.net/article/504087-Explosions-rock-Utrecht-with-buildings-damaged-and-multiple-people-injured

Explosions in the Dutch city of Utrecht have caused extensive damage to buildings, and several people have been left injured.

Fire crews reported a 'gigantic explosion'.

Surrounding buildings have been left destroyed, with smashed windows and debris scattered over the pavements and roads.

Aerial view of the damage from an explosion in Utrecht, Netherlands, January 15, 2026

'Nothing can be said yet about the cause of the explosions,' a police spokesperson said.

A building has partially collapsed, and police are expecting more explosions, an officer told a reporter at the scene.

(Comet? Gas blast? Terrorism?)

https://www.reuters.com/world/explosion-causes-large-fire-dutch-town-utrecht-2026-01-15/

A gas leak triggered a powerful explosion that destroyed several houses in the central Dutch city of Utrecht on Thursday, injuring four people, local authorities said.

 

[Gwenllian]

Whatever happened in Utrecht IMO the authorities may use it to prime the population about the dangers of gas, so we should all switch to 'green' energy? These explosions seem to happen on a regular basis. I remember a gas explosion many years ago when I lived there, also in the town centre. Old gas pipelines perhaps?

It is interesting that they still don't know what caused the explosion, but MSM are already 'educating' the masses about the dangers of gas. In a press conference the mayor mentioned that some people had smelled gas, but when I read the initial news reports there was no mention of it. Witnesses talked about loud explosions, that was it.

Coincidentally (or not) there was another 'gas explosion' in Vlissingen, the South of the Netherlands on January the 13th.

We have a rather complicated relationship with gas. In the North we had the largest gas field of Europe, but since gas drilling has caused minor earthquakes (there was another one recently) with much damage to old buildings they stopped drilling altogether in 2023, using these earthquakes as an excuse to cut people off from cheaper gas. FWIW.

 

[ishiki]

Whatever happened in Utrecht IMO the authorities may use it to prime the population about the dangers of gas, so we should all switch to 'green' energy? These explosions seem to happen on a regular basis. I remember a gas explosion many years ago when I lived there, also in the town centre. Old gas pipelines perhaps?

That’s also the first thing I thought of, and it’s probably a maintenance issue? Or maybe it was a battery explosion afterall...

That said, I do have to point out that old houses (pre-1940) still can’t go off gas anytime soon. The efficiency of electric heating is far below that of gas heating, and the industry knows this. That’s why they’re running pilot projects with hydrogen. On the other hand, I should note that monuments these days are less strictly protected, so sustainability measures now take priority over the cityscape appearance.

 

[Gaby]

(Comet? Gas blast? Terrorism?)

Interesting enough, on the sott section for a close date, we have this:

Meteor fireball over the Netherlands on January 14

We received 51 reports about a fireball seen over Flevoland, Friesland, Gelderland, Noord-Holland, North Holland, Overijssel, South Holland, Utrecht and Zuid-Holland on Wednesday, January 14th 2026 around 17:59 UT. For this event, we received 2...

www.sott.net

We received 51 reports about a fireball seen over Flevoland, Friesland, Gelderland, Noord-Holland, North Holland, Overijssel, South Holland, Utrecht and Zuid-Holland on Wednesday, January 14th 2026 around 17:59 UT.

Then, day afterwards:

A massive explosion and ensuing fire struck the historic city center of Utrecht, Netherlands, on January 15, 2026, around 3:30 p.m. local time.

Not that it was the cause. But it makes you wonder if one of the factors was "action at a distance: discharge events"

 

[palestine]

Interesting enough, on the sott section for a close date, we have this:

Meteor fireball over the Netherlands on January 14

We received 51 reports about a fireball seen over Flevoland, Friesland, Gelderland, Noord-Holland, North Holland, Overijssel, South Holland, Utrecht and Zuid-Holland on Wednesday, January 14th 2026 around 17:59 UT. For this event, we received 2...

www.sott.net

Then, day afterwards:



Not that it was the cause. But it makes you wonder if one of the factors was "action at a distance: discharge events"

I saw that, too, meanwhile posting! Thank you for posting about it, I hesitated to embed it in my post. I wanted to go "info report" and I left my "takes" in parenthesis.

Well - I am not used to discern potential links to a space rock. It is interesting that the cometary event you posted happened... At Utrecht.

You mention:

discharge events

I only had room for a "space rock" to "land" - but why not a sort of gravity phenomenon, breaking gas pipes? I don't know if this is what you mean by "discharge events" but I believe so.

I would look at high res picture of the location, to know if something could have crashed. As of yesterday, it was only aerial pictures with smoke.

 

[Gaby]

I don't know if this is what you mean by "discharge events" but I believe so.

Do you have Pierre's book at hand? "Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection"?

See chapter 21, "Increase in Cometary Activity", the section titled "Action at a distance: discharge events", literally.

The section title is a term likely borrowed from James McCanney. Pierre goes on to explain electric interactions between a meteor and a power plant, fertilizer plants, industrial plumes with a negative electric charge, and even nuclear plants emitting ionizing radiation which scrape away electrons from molecules, creating positive and negative ions. In the conductive plume, the negative ions are attracted to the top of the plume by the positive ionosphere. In addition, water vapor is a good electric conductor.

If that was the case, the question remains, what could have been the triggering factors if the atmosphere was already primed for this event? There's no nuclear plants in the Netherlands, except for one. That is as far as I checked.

 

[palestine]

Do you have Pierre's book at hand? "Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection"?

See chapter 21, "Increase in Cometary Activity", the section titled "Action at a distance: discharge events", literally.

The section title is a term likely borrowed from James McCanney. Pierre goes on to explain electric interactions between a meteor and a power plant, fertilizer plants, industrial plumes with a negative electric charge, and even nuclear plants emitting ionizing radiation which scrape away electrons from molecules, creating positive and negative ions. In the conductive plume, the negative ions are attracted to the top of the plume by the positive ionosphere. In addition, water vapor is a good electric conductor.

If that was the case, the question remains, what could have been the triggering factors if the atmosphere was already primed for this event? There's no nuclear plants in the Netherlands, except for one. That is as far as I checked.

Thank you, I had a look!

"Earth changes and the human-cosmic connection"

... an apparent spike in unexplained surface-level explosions, one sub-set of which is explosions or fires at industrial plants.

Before investigations had even begun, official explanations in all of these cases invoked similar
causes each time: chemical reactions, accidents, defective equipment, human error, etc. However, I
would like to propose that cometary discharge or impact may be the cause for at least some of these
explosions and fires. Figure 85 shows how an industrial plume can act as an attractor for cometary
discharge.

A (left illustration): A meteor enters the atmosphere. Its (relative) positive charge pulls negative
charges (free electrons) up from the plant and the metallic chimney. Those electrons are captured by
the low-mobility smoke particles of the plume, making even more negative the charge of fumes that
are already loaded with negative ions.*?? The positive meteor and the negative plume attract each
other.

B (center illustration): When the electric charge difference is high enough and/or the distance
small enough, a massive discharge occurs. An ascending lightning bolt (upward electrons transfer)
directly connects the chimney and its plume to the meteor.

C (right illustration): The lightning bolt leaves an ionized and negatively charged atmospheric
trail that attracts what remains of the positively charged meteor towards the vicinity of the plant.
Note that the meteor may have fragmented before reaching the ground.

In the case of this Utrecht event, there would need to, then, have an industrial company of some sort. I wasn't able to confirm this, and it seems the blast occurred in a residential area.

On a reddit, some hinted at a crystal meth lab exploding (joking, but, why not).

Another user hinted at an explosion in an plant, in Amsterdam, not that long ago:

Explosion causes power outage in Amsterdam city center, west neighborhoods

Wednesday, 14 January 2026 - 17:10

Large portions of Amsterdam’s city center, and neighborhoods in the west and southwest of the capital were without power on Wednesday afternoon

Shortly after 4 p.m., firefighters were dispatched to the substation on Marnixtraat after people called emergency services reporting a smell of smoke, emergency services records show. “During maintenance work on Marnixstraat, an explosion occurred,” a fire department spokesperson told AT5 without specifying what exactly was damaged in the blast.

Large portions of Amsterdam’s city center, and neighborhoods in the west and southwest of the capital were without power on Wednesday afternoon, after a report of an explosion at one of the city’s key electricity substations.

The fireball report over Utrecht says:

Wednesday, January 14th 2026 around 17:59 UT

Universal Time for Netherlands would be 18:59. It's not much of a match for me :( But can it be that the 18:59 was only the visible event, and that the afternoon featured other ones?

It can be, too, that there is nothing :)