A post office named after the first Indian American Congressman, Dilip Singh Saund, located about 95 kilometre north of the epicentre of a major earthquake in Baja California in Mexico that rattled sky scrapers as far as Los Angeles, was reported to be safe and sound.
"There is no damage to the Dilip Singh Saund Post Office," Amrit Pal Toor, a local businessmen in the Temecula City, California, told PTI over phone. There are about 50 Indian American families living in the city.
Toor said residents of the city rushed out of their homes amidst panic as buildings started shaking due to the earthquake; which according to the US Geological Survey was measured 7.2 magnitudes.
The Geological Survey said the epicentre was located about 170 kilometres from the border city of Tijuana and 48 kilometres southeast of Mexicali, Capital of the state.
"All Indian Americans are safe and there has been no report so far of any damage," Toor said. Inder Singh, an eminent Indian American community leader in Los Angeles whose house too was rattled by the quake, said there was no
immediate report of any damage among the Indian American community.
Singh, who was quickly on phone calling up other Indian American communities after the quake, said there was no initial report of any damage to the Indian American community either in San Diego or El Santro, which are near the Mexico
border and have major concentration of Indian Americans in California.
While San Diego has a thriving Indian American community for more than 10,000; there are less than a thousand of Indian Americans in El Santro; which came up with the first Sikh
Gurudwara in North America in 1912.
Notably, California has among the highest concentration of Indian Americans in the US along with the tri-State area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
The part of Southern California where the tremors were felt very strongly has been the early settlement area for the Indian American community, reflected in the very fact that the
first Indian American Congressman Dilip Singh Saund was elected to the US House of Representatives from 1957 to 1963 from the 29th District of California.
In 2005, the US Congress voted to Christian a post office after him in Temecula City; thus giving the distinction of being the first Indian American who has a post office in
his name.
America's oldest Sikh temple, nearly a century old, also withstood the major Mexican earthquake, reports said.
"There was no noticeable damage to the Sikh temple," David Dhillon, the former Mayor of El Centro, near the US Mexico border, told PTI over phone, a few hours after he drove through the one of the oldest city structures.
One of the oldest Sikh temples of North America, the El Centro Sikh Temple is said to be built sometime between 1910 and 1912 and would soon be celebrating its centenary.
"This was a big earthquake following which the electricity went off for three hours," Dhillon said.
He said there is couple of hundred Indian Americans in the city and according to initial reports there was no damage to any of them or their properties.
There are about 50 Indian American families living in the city.