A couple were trapped inside their rooms when the balcony of the floor where they live in a three-storey building in Bhabani Dutta Lane, off College Street, collapsed early on Tuesday.

The couple — the husband is in his 60s and the wife in her 50s — were brought down by fire brigade and disaster management personnel.

Engineers of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), too, went to the site.

There were 13 people in the building when the second-floor balcony collapsed. Eleven of them managed to come down, said a resident.

“This is a 100-year-old building. My parents were in their second-floor rooms when the balcony collapsed. The rest of us managed to come out but my parents were stuck,” said Anushka Morarka.

Anushka said that under the weight of the debris of the second-floor balcony, the first floor collapsed, too.

“We are now living on a portion of the ground floor,” she said.

The balcony collapsed around 12.30am on Tuesday. Most residents were asleep. “My sister and my mother were awake. They heard a loud sound and alerted the other residents of the building,” she said.

A senior KMC official said the civic body had issued a notice to the residents asking them to repair the building.

Anushka denied the claim. “We did not get any notice from the KMC,” she told Metro.

A demolition team from the KMC pulled down dangerous portions of the building on Tuesday.

The KMC official said there are many old and crumbling buildings in the city. While some of them can be restored, many are beyond repairs.

“We have tagged more than 200 buildings as bipojjonok bari (dangerous buildings). These buildings are mostly beyond repairs,” he said.

KMC officials said rules have been amended to make it easier for the owners of old and crumbling buildings with multiple tenants to pull down the structures and erect new ones on the plots.

“Every year, portions of dilapidated buildings collapse during the monsoon,” said a KMC official.