The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) has promised to clear an aban­doned con­struc­tion site at East Grove, Val­sayn, which was rav­aged by a bush fire that al­most de­stroyed nine homes on Sun­day.

The fire, which took place around 10 am, start­ed at the aban­doned site and be­gan to spread to the near­by homes and a WASA treat­ment plant, the res­i­dents in a let­ter stat­ed.

“Due to the sever­i­ty of the blaze, it took fire of­fi­cers sev­er­al hours be­fore they could have con­tained it,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The res­i­dents com­plained that for three years they have been ask­ing HDC and those in au­thor­i­ty to prop­er­ly main­tain the site, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.

“The res­i­dents have re­quest­ed that the derelict ma­chin­ery and ve­hi­cles and con­tain­ers be re­moved. Most re­cent­ly, we have been the vic­tims of break-ins, two on the Jan­u­ary 11, 2019 and then again an at­tempt on Feb­ru­ary 8, 2019,” the let­ter fur­ther stat­ed.

The claimed that footage of these in­ci­dences showed that the site had been over­grown with tow­er­ing grass.

“It is be­ing used by ban­dits to hide be­fore they make their move to break-in. Yes­ter­day could have been a se­ri­ous tragedy for us home own­ers and our fam­i­lies,” the res­i­dents stat­ed.

In re­sponse to the res­i­dents’ plight, HDC’s man­ag­er of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions Dike Noel gave the as­sur­ance that the mat­ter will be ad­dressed with ur­gency.

“Our Es­tate Man­age­ment team will be charged with treat­ing with the con­cerns iden­ti­fied by the res­i­dents,” Noel said.