Valley Resident Receives Good News From His Homeland : Granada Hills: Man’s relatives in India are safe in wake of quake. Many other immigrants brace for worst as they try to make contact by phone.

His forehead creased by concern, his fingers drumming on the desk top, Dinesh Lakhanpal picked up the telephone in his Granada Hills insurance office Friday and made a call he never dreamed he’d make.

A world away in India, an earthquake had leveled much of his homeland the previous day. More than 20,000 people were already confirmed dead--a toll that would no doubt rise as officials picked through the rubble of the ramshackle mud and brick homes in three southern states near sprawling Bombay where the temblor struck.

Meanwhile, in the San Fernando Valley, Lakhanpal and some 10,000 of his countrymen spread between Burbank and Thousand Oaks felt a gnawing ache of helplessness--stunned as they watched news reports, anxious as they waited by the phone for some word of relatives and friends.

And like Lakhanpal, many picked up the phone and dialed home, fearing that the news would not be good.

With few phones in rural areas, they knew access was limited on good days, and in a developing country such as India would become chaotic under the stress of a devastating earthquake.

Since yesterday, Indian-born immigrants throughout Southern California have called one another for consolation and information. Many, like Lakhanpal, planned to gather this weekend at local Hindu temples and community centers to discuss what they can do to help response efforts back home.

And no doubt, as the dust of a battered country settles, many will hear grim news of family members.

But on Friday, Lakhanpal, an engineer and insurance salesman who immigrated to the United States with his wife 23 years ago, received good news: His eight brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts, nephews and uncles--all were safe.

“Yes, yes, that’s good to hear,” the man known as Danny to his friends whispered into the receiver as he talked with his older brother, an Indian army officer who lived near the area where the earthquake wreaked its worst damage in the southwestern state of Maharashtra.

Noon in Los Angeles, it was midnight back in the Punjab. The long distance caused a crackling on the line and a two-second delay in the conversation. But for Lakhanpal, it didn’t matter.

This was his first contact with family since he heard about the earthquake Thursday morning. All his previous calls had either become disconnected or misrouted to wrong numbers.

And so he fiddled anxiously with the paper clips in his top desk drawer as his brother detailed the quake’s fury as it struck at about midnight India-time the night before. Even 100 miles away from the most damaged areas, Lakhanpal was told, his brother could feel his own house shake, but it did not fall.

The mud and brick houses in the states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka were not so fortunate: They were reduced to rubble, many of their occupants buried alive inside.

“It’s a terrible thing because people in my country never thought they had to fear such things as earthquakes,” Lakhanpal said. “Monsoons, yes. Disease, yes. But not earthquakes. There had not been one in 50 years before this.”

Three years ago, Lakhanpal and his family spent a month touring India. The engineer was shocked at what he saw. “The infrastructure is very old. The buildings are not made to withstand such force. They do not build them that way. And so the damage was astronomical.

“The earthquake that hit my country was a magnitude of 6.4. But the damage--it was as though a quake of twice as much power had hit the United States.”

All day Friday, Indian friends visited his tiny insurance office, their faces showing the strain as they braced for the worst. When they left, they bowed to Lakhanpal with palms pressed together, the customary Indian salutation called a Namasee.

On Friday night, Lakhanpal was to address a crowd gathering at his home for a previously planned fund-raiser for a California political candidate. An appeal for clothing, money and time for the earthquake relief effort will be added.

And on Sunday, Lakhanpal, who is also president of the Hindu Temple and Indian Cultural Center in Chatsworth, said the faithful would gather and plan their next move to help the tens of thousands of unfortunate countrymen back home.

“It is going to be a long day,” he said. “Because that is the time when the horrible stories will come, when people will hear about the ugly fate of their friends and relatives.

“That is the time when we will truly begin to feel our losses.”

Elsewhere in Southern California, shaken Indian community leaders were huddling anxiously with family and friends, planning prayer services and meeting at community centers, hoping to find a way to help those in their stricken homeland.

At the offices of the Federation of Hindu Assns. in Artesia’s Little India, home to spice stores and sari boutiques, office worker Ramesh Gandhi was trying to arrange a phone bank so that volunteers could take the pledges that were pouring in from as far south as the Mexican border.

“At this time, Indians are one, no matter our differences,” said Amrit Nehru, a dentist, greeting people at the headquarters, a nerve center of Southern California’s 200,000-strong Indian community. “We are together for the greatness of India.”

A man showed up from Upland, 60 miles away, to drop off a $150 check. Others came from Cerritos, Diamond Bar and Valencia.

Dheeraj Sulakhe of Diamond Bar spoke to a cousin living about 60 miles from the epicenter and was told not to send supplies because the area was too remote to reach.

“By the time the supplies get there, it will be too late, he told me,” said Sulakhe, 31. “Money is the only thing that can go there in time.”