A second firebomb attack on the temple at St Louis in Missouri has made the Indian community jittery.
On February 28, someone first threw a brick through a window followed by a container filled with flammable liquid, police said.
The liquid started a fire at 3:45 am and set off the alarm system in the temple, which alerted the priests living nearby.
"A major fire was averted with only a part of a carpet inside the temple catching fire," Jiwan Singla, past president and building committee chairman of the 13-year-old temple, said.
Police found foot marks of two people outside, which they traced to a field.
After the first attack on February 22, the temple had installed video cameras outside in addition to the ones inside, installed after an earlier attack two years ago.
One such camera captured the container being thrown through the window and the resulting fire. But the camera could not capture the culprits on the videotape, sources said.
"There's no indication this is a hate crime, but you never know," St Louis County police officer Mason Keller was quoted in the media. "But with two incidents in two weeks, there's a good chance it might be. It's certainly very coincidental."
The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are also involved in the investigation.
"We are worried about the safety of the community members," Singla said.
The temple officials are looking into additional security measures, including hiring a security guard and installing perimeter fencing, motion-detector lights and more cameras.
In the February 22 incident the fire quickly burned itself out, charring a 4-foot section of the door. Officials came to know of the attack the next morning only when they came to open the temple, located at 725, Weidman Road in west St Louis County.
There is no threat to the temple or of acts of graffiti at the temple, police insist.
The temple, with Lord Venkatesa as the principal deity, is one of the largest in the US serving more than 8,000 families.
There is a community center named after Mahatma Gandhi in front of the temple and a mosque a furlong away.
Krishna Reddy, president of the trustee board, pointed out the temple has no dispute with anybody, but said there was an attack on the statues in front of the temple two years ago. Vandals had cut parts of the statues, which were later replaced.
In spite of the attack on February 28, the Maha Shivratri celebrations in the temple went on with the usual festivities. The celebrations had begun at 7 am on March 1.
Incidentally, on the same night as the first firebombing on February 22, someone broke the glass front door on the Hindu Temple and Cultural Center of Kansas City in Shawnee, Kansas, causing damage estimated at about $700.
An FBI spokesman in Kansas City told the St Louis Post Dispatch that the incident was not being investigated as a hate crime.