New Delhi slum destroyed by fire
A resident cries after her shanty was gutted during a fire in New Delhi on June 22, 2012. Around 100 dwellings were gutted in a fire at a slum cluster and in an adjoining scrapyard in the Indian capital June 22. No casualties have been reported thus far, according to local media reports.
A fire broke out in a slum in India's capital on Friday, destroying hundreds of huts where residents had collected scrap plastic and rubber for resale.
Fire department chief AK Sharma said no one was reported injured or killed, according to the Associated Press. It took 25 fire trucks and 70 firefighters about two hours to put out the flames, which created billowing black smoke as they engulfed piles of plastic bottles, tarps, rubber tires and scraps of wood that thousand's of residents had collected in order to resell.
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"The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained. While between 100 and 150 hutments are suspected to have been destroyed, fortunately, no casualties were reported," a senior Delhi Fire Service official (DFS) said, reported the Hindustan Times.
The Times also reported that DFS officials suspected a small fire set to burn garbage at a location inside the slum cluster could have been the reason for the fire, but investigations are still under way.
The fire was ablaze next to a row of three hospitals in the historical part of the city, but a brick wall between the two areas kept the hospitals out of harms way, according to the New York Daily News. Another fire burned in the nation's financial center of Mumbai yesterday, gutting state government offices and killing three people before it was put out.
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