A gurdwara, which was under construction and set to serve Portland metro area’s largest Sikh community in Washington State, was destroyed in a massive fire early Friday morning.
The former athletic club-turned-Sikh gurdwara burned to the ground after the fire sparked just before 2:30 am local time at the property in the east Vancouver Landover-Sharmel neighbourhood.
Being constructed on 2.5 acres of land at an estimated cost of half a million dollars, the gurdwara was in the final phase of construction.
No casualty was reported in the incident.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), along with other local agencies, is looking into the cause of the fire with the Sikh leaders in the U.S. not ruling out the possibility of a hate crime.
