Two wounded women in a balcony on the third floor in San Francisco

Two women were seriously injured Saturday in the Sunset District, outside San Francisco, after falling into the street when a third-floor balcony collapsed, fire officials said.

Four people were standing on what building inspectors called a "decorative metal balcony" when it collapsed at 12:06 pm on Lawton Street, between the 26th and 27th Avenues.

Two of the men on the balcony managed to protect themselves from a fall, but both women hit the ground, said Carl Malchow of the San Francisco Building Inspection Department.

Fire officials said the women were taken to the San Francisco General Hospital for treatment. They were in a stable state on Saturday afternoon, said Malchow.

The city's building inspectors were called in to investigate the balcony's failure.

Jonathan Baxter, a spokesman for the fire department, said he could not comment on the incident because of an ongoing police investigation into bankruptcy.

In 2015, the collapse of a balcony in downtown Berkeley killed six youths and injured seven others. An investigation by local authorities revealed severe dry rot in wooden beams.

Kimberly Veklerov is a writer at the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @kveklerov