The Salt Lake civic body has decided to chop the trees that fell on houses and clear driveways of uprooted trees that were lying unattended since Cyclone Amphan struck the city on May 20.

The storm felled more than 3,000 trees in the township.

The civic body had earlier left it to residents to clear the trees that had fallen on their houses if they had been planted by them on nearby pavements and median dividers.

An official of the corporation said councillors had been asked to prepare a list of houses on which the trees fell. The list has to be readied by Monday.

According to the official, the decision to remove the trees was taken at a meeting held in Poura Bhavan.

The Telegraph had reported on June 1 about the plight of the residents on whose houses trees had fallen or were leaning precariously.

“Earlier, our teams would go and ask the owners of the houses if the trees that fell on their properties had been planted by them. If they answered in the affirmative, the team would ask the residents to cut the trees on their own,” the official said.

Krishna Chakraborty, the mayor of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, said they would remove all uprooted trees from driveways and houses.

According to Chakraborty, they had earlier steered clear of removing trees that had fallen on houses because they wanted the handful of tree-cutting teams to focus entirely on roads and other public places like parks.

“Now, most roads in Salt Lake have been cleared and we have managed to remove several big trees that had fallen in parks, too,” said Chakraborty.

A senior official in the civic environment department, however, said the reason for the change in stand is the resentment among residents as the fallen trees had not been removed even two weeks after Amphan had struck the city. Despite repeated calls, no one from the civic body turned up to remove the trees.

Trees have either fallen on buildings or are leaning on them in several blocks of Salt Lake, including AE, EE, AD, AC, BC and DL.

The corporation has around four teams that are working to clear the township of fallen trees. It has, however, only one hydraulic lift, which is needed to reach branches at higher levels.

The official said a recent survey had revealed that most of the trees that had fallen on buildings were quite high. The hydraulic lift is needed to remove the trees because the tree top has to be pruned first to reduce the weight.

“If we cut near the base of the trunk with the top foliage intact, the tree can veer out of control and injure people or damage property,” said the official.

Several residents said the civic body should have removed the trees earlier. Debarjun Saha, who stays in a two-storey house in BC block with his family, said it was a miracle that the krishnachura tree that was hanging dangerously over his balcony had not come crashing down yet.

“I am scared for my children,” said Saha.

The Telegraph report on June 1