Three people were seriously injured on Friday, August 14, after two explosions caused by a gas leak in a building in central Brussels. The victims were two employees of the energy company Sibelga and a firefighter who had responded to secure the building. They were taken to the hospital, primarily for burns.
The leak reportedly occurred around 11:30 a.m. during work to install fiber optic cables. According to initial reports, a company drilled too deep and damaged a low-pressure gas line. Approximately one hundred people were in the building at the time, which houses, among other things, the Single Resolution Board, the authority responsible for resolving European banks.
Around a hundred people were evacuated before the explosions.
The building was evacuated before the first explosion, heard around 13:30 p.m. A second, more powerful explosion then shook neighboring buildings. According to Sibelga, the explosions did not occur directly at the damaged pipeline, but inside the building, where gas had apparently accumulated. This preventative evacuation likely prevented a much higher death toll.
A large security perimeter has been established in the area near the Central Station, causing traffic and public transport disruptions. After the pipeline was cut, technical teams continued their checks while civil protection officials assessed the building's stability. An expert is scheduled to arrive on Saturday to determine the precise cause of the explosions, while the investigation has been entrusted to the labor inspectorate, which has jurisdiction over workplace safety offenses.
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