A massive fire destroyed nearly 500 thatched huts in a New Delhi slum Friday, depriving the already impoverished residents of their homes. Seven people were hospitalised for burn injuries. The blaze reduced nearly half of the shantytown to smoldering piles of thatch and charred debris – plastic bottles, tarps, rubber tires and scraps of wood. Shantytowns in India are mostly built illegally without any safety standards.