In Southland, Emigres Ache for Reports

The impact of India’s deadly earthquake was keenly felt Friday in Southern California, where thousands of residents with friends or family in India and Pakistan anxiously sought news of loved ones.

Busy phone lines frustrated many of the estimated 200,000 Indian Americans in the Los Angeles area. “The biggest problem is getting information from India,” said Bharatsinh Zala, 47, a Compton pharmacist from Ahmadabad, the commercial hub of Gujarat state, where the quake was centered.

Zala started making calls to India at 1 a.m. California time and never reached his parents’ home. Late in the afternoon, he finally heard from a brother in San Jose that his family was safe and that their house was still standing, although its walls were cracked.

Zala’s experience was probably shared by thousands of Southern Californians. Zala, a lay leader of a Whittier Hindu temple that is a branch of a sect based in Ahmadabad, said that about a third of Indians in the local area hail from Gujarat state, in western India.

Kokila Shah, 56, of Cypress heard about the magnitude 7.9 quake when her brother in Los Angeles telephoned late Thursday.

Shah’s thoughts immediately turned to her son, a Buena Park resident vacationing in Gujarat. “I was so worried,” she said tearfully. “I couldn’t sleep all night.”

By 1 a.m., Shah gave up trying to get through on the phone lines. At 3:30 a.m., her 30-year-old son, Jaydip, was able to reach her from India. He was safe, even though the top two floors of the house in which he was staying had collapsed.

Local Indian groups began organizing relief efforts Friday. Zala said his congregation at the BAPS temple in Whittier is trying to determine whether any local members have lost relatives and is raising money for victims in India.

The California Community Foundation is collecting monetary donations.

Another group of Southern Californians visiting India escaped harm. Twenty-five Rotary Club members from Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties were in New Delhi watching a Republic Day parade, marking the 1950 adoption of the Indian Constitution, when the quake hit. They didn’t feel the temblor, club leader Brenda Cressy of Paso Robles said.

After learning of the quake’s toll, which reached the thousands, one of the club’s volunteers called home to let family members know that they were all right, Cressy said.

The tri-county group has spent the past two weeks administering polio vaccines to children in New Delhi.

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Times staff writer Tracy Wilson in Ventura contributed to this report.