Falling meteorite smashes hole in roof of German house after spectacular ‘fireball’ explosion over Europe
A fireball exploded spectacularly across Europe’s skies before raining flaming fragments onto buildings in a German city – punching a hole through the roof of a house and into the bedroom below, according to reports.
On Sunday, March 8, around 6:55 p.m. local time, a meteor passed through the atmosphere over the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate before suddenly exploding, creating a bright flash that lasted about six seconds, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). The light show probably meant space rock, filmed by the European fireball network AllSky7, measured “several meters” in diameter.
More than 3,000 people, including eyewitnesses in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, reported the explosion to the International Meteor Organization. Several people also reported hearing the atmospheric explosion from the ground.
Article continues below
ESA representatives wrote that “at least one house in the German city of Koblenz-Güls was reportedly hit by small pieces of the resulting meteorites.”
Local reports have since confirmed that several buildings in the area were hit by fragments. Some of these meteorites have since been collected, Live Science partner site Space.com reported. No one appears to have suffered any physical injuries from the falling space rocks.
It is unclear how many buildings were affected by the alien debris or the full extent of the damage. However, the German news site Bild shared several photos of the city, home to about 110,000 residents, including an image of a football-sized hole in a roof. Local firefighters told Bild that the stone that made the hole ended up in a bedroom, which was unoccupied at the time.
Another photo showed nine golf ball-sized stones in a brown paper bag. However, it is unclear whether these are indeed all of the fragments collected, and whether they are real meteorites has yet to be confirmed.
Fireball meteors occur when falling space rocks are superheated due to high levels of friction from the surrounding air, according to the American Meteor Society. This often causes the object to break, creating a secondary flash of light (as seen in the last video).
Most of the resulting fragments burn before hitting the ground or are so small that they are never found. But sometimes a few larger pieces remain intact before hitting the surface of our planet, especially when the fireball breaks up near the ground.
The space rock that exploded over Germany was not known to scientists before it entered Earth’s atmosphere. But it’s “not unusual”, given that only 11 meteors have ever been observed. detected before hitting our planetaccording to the ESA.
Other close calls
It is extremely rare for meteorites to land in populated areas, let alone impact property or people. But it’s already happened.
In June of last year, a space rock that pierced the roof of a house in Georgia and was later discovered to be older than Earth. Similar incidents have also seen meteorites crash into the bedrooms of people’s homes. New Jersey in 2023 And British Columbia in 2021. And in 2022, a house in California burned after being hit by a suspected fireball fragment – although it is unclear whether this was the true cause of the fire.
A little space rock too landed and burned a driveway in South West England in 2021 and was collected for analysis. A similar meeting took place filmed with a doorbell camera in a Canadian home in January 2025, which also captured the first-ever sound of a meteorite impact.
And in 2023, a French woman would have been directly hit by a rock-sized meteorite while drinking coffee on his porch, without causing any real injury. This is believed to be only the second confirmed case of a human-meteorite impact, after an Alabama woman was struck and injured by a large rock that crashed onto her roof while she was sleeping in 1954, according to Smithsonian Review.
