This is the shocking moment the courtyard of a rural family collapses after they dug into a cliff to build a cave system that provided extra living space.

A CCTV camera captured the shocking moment that the cliff collapsed into the courtyard on the farm at Laocheng Village on the outskirts of the county-level city of Gongyi in Henan Province, in South Central China

There is an initial fall in what appears to be more tunnels towards the top of the cliff with the earth toppling onto a terrace, then for a brief instant there is calm, then slowly the entire mass of the cliff including the brick face of the cave-dwelling collapses forward, bearing the entire courtyard in dust and debris and threatening to destroy the house.

The entire collapse took less than 30 seconds as shown by the video, and incredibly everybody in the extended family escaped harm because they decided to go out that day for a meal and nobody was fortunately home.

The owner of the property said that the front of the structure had been a brick structure leading into a hollowed-out cave at the back but they admitted that the pillars that were supporting it had started to decay and had not been replaced in time.

The final straw was recent flooding which had made the ground incredibly heavy and put an unbearable strain on the pillars, which had then collapsed causing the destruction seen in the video.

Rescuers said that the local government is now investigating similar structures and also fencing off dilapidated houses to prevent people from entering if they are deemed a risk.

A local government spokesman said: “Like this cave-dwelling, there are no cracks in the exterior, and it suddenly collapsed. This shows that we must carefully investigate the older cave dwellings.”