A Dutch man is fighting for his life after a petanque ball exploded when it was left at a fire pit.
The man was part of a 14-person bachelor party in Stavelot, Belgium, and was enjoying a drink when the boule exploded.
It is clear that the young man suffered serious shrapnel on the head in the incident on Saturday evening in a holiday home near the Amblève river.
While the exact circumstances are still under investigation, initial reports said the petanque ball was in or under a fire pit when it exploded from the heat.
According to the police, the effect was comparable to the explosion of a grenade, De Telegraaf reports today.
A Dutch man fights for his life over an exploding petanque ball (pictured) left at a fire pit, according to local reports
As a result of the blast, one of the men present at the party suffered a metal shard to the head and was rushed to hospital in a critical condition.
“When it exploded, someone got pieces in the back of the skull. His days are in danger,” the Belgian publication Sudinfo quoted a police source as saying.
Sudinfo suggested that someone at the party had the “stupid idea” of putting the metal petanque balls in a brazier at their gîte or cottage.
Petanque, one of the most popular games in France and Belgium, is a form of boules in which metal balls are thrown as close as possible to a smaller wooden ball.
Competition boules are hollow, made by welding two steel hemispheres together before being heated to about 900 degrees and then finished.
However, cheap metal-walled boules are usually filled with a sand-like mixture to give them the weight that steel equivalents would have, and are at risk of exploding when heated to high temperatures.
The tragic incident is not the first time someone has been seriously injured or even killed in such circumstances.
In 2018, a Frenchman was killed when a petanque ball exploded and shrapnel lodged in his skull. The ball was left at a barbecue. It was reported at the time that paramedics rushed to the scene but were unable to save the 31-year-old.
And in 2009, a new unsold set of leisure boules spontaneously exploded on a shelf in the warehouse of a store in Switzerland.
An investigation was launched into the explosion, with the Swiss department store chain Co-op – which sold the sets – issuing an urgent recall.
The incident prompted the German government to issue a statement warning people of the danger of cheaply made boules reaching high temperatures.
The German Petanque Federation (DPA) recommended buying certified boules and buying them in specific petanque shops, as opposed to supermarkets.
The Swiss Federal Laboratory of Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) analyzed the remaining set and found that they were cheaply made.
EMPA found that they had poorly welded seams and were filled with a sand-like mixture (referred to as ‘mortar’ in some news reports at the time).
The organization found that the sand was damp and contaminated with metal filings, which had corroded over time. This chemical reaction produced hydrogen gas, which accumulated in one of the boules, creating a lot of pressure.
In the end, the seam failed and the ball exploded dramatically, the EMPA reported.
It is understood that in the incident at a holiday home near the River Amblève on Saturday night, the young man suffered severe shrapnel injuries to the head when a metal ball exploded, sending shrapnel flying into his head. He is in critical condition
There have been other reported incidents. In 2016, in a German town near Düsseldorf, a petanque ball exploded in the middle of a party tent. The explosion tore a hole in the roof of the tent and left a crater in the ground.
A German bomber responded, removed the remaining seven boules in the set and detonated them safely.
A year later, in 2017, a Thai man became the first known person to be killed by an exploding boule. Reports suggested that the players thought soaking the boule in water and then warming it up would help.
It’s clear the man was heating up boules when one exploded, sending a metal shard flying around that pierced his skull, killing him instantly.