More than 30 apartments in a Noord-Brabant village have been evacuated after two balconies collapsed in the middle of the night.

The second floor balcony on the Luitenant Looymanshof, in the village of Oudenbosch is thought to have come loose and brought down the first floor balcony on its way to the ground.

Nobody was injured, but the council decided to clear all 32 apartments after an initial inspection found cracks in the wall. The owner of the building, a management company, has been asked to commission a surveyor’s report.

‘It needs to be done quickly because we want to be sure that the residents are 100% safe,’ a spokesman told Omroep Brabant. ‘We will only have that security once the investigation is complete, which is why we’re clearing the building.’

One resident said that he heard a loud noise at around 5am on Thursday. ‘We thought at first that a gas bottle had exploded. But then we read in the neighbourhood WhatsApp chat group that the balconies had fallen down.’

A spokesman for the local safety board said it was fortunate that the balconies collapsed while people were indoors. ‘You don’t want to think about what might have happened if something like this had happened in the daytime.