Classes are being canceled today at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa's Edmondson Hall, after its classrooms, offices and laboratories suffered extensive water damage over the weekend when a fire caused a small water pipe to fail and flood three of the building's four floors.

Firefighters said they couldn't say when the fire began in a third-floor office, but said it was probably extinguished when solder on a half-inch copper pipe failed and the flooding began. A maintenance worker checking Edmondson Hall discovered the water at about 8 yesterday morning.

Electrical problems related to an old air conditioner are suspected of causing the fire. The water leaked through to lower floors, causing water-soaked ceiling tiles to fall on floors, desks, computers and scientific equipment. Water dripped from ceilings and up to a half-inch or more accumulated in some areas of the lower floors.

UH associate professor Lenny Freed said the fire started in his office around an air conditioner plugged into a 220-volt outlet. He said he had notified UH that the air conditioner was on its last leg but had not suspected it might have electrical problems.

"I'm sort of in a state of shock," said Freed. Air conditioners "usually don't die with a burst of flame, which may have occurred in this case."

Freed, an evolutionary ecologist who studies endangered forest birds on the Big Island, said he lost thousands of scientific articles to the fire, along with books and 35 mm slides that melted. Freed also lost books he had stored for his wife, a professor of cell and molecular biology, after her office was hit during the disastrous Halloween eve Manoa flooding of 2004.

"Her books survived the major flood but got burned several years later," he said.

Firefighters from Manoa and Kaimuki said they received a call about 8:30 a.m. yesterday. They turned off the water line causing the flooding and later helped squeegee and vacuum standing water.

Edmondson Hall is one of the older buildings on the UH campus and is adjacent to Hamilton Library and across McCarthy Mall from Bilger Hall. The structure opened in 1962 as the first classroom building on the campus to be constructed with federal funds. It is named after Charles H. Edmondson, a former UH professor, and houses the school's zoology department.

The 45-year-old structure wasn't built with a fire sprinkler system and has infrastructure that needs to be updated, said associate professor Timothy Tricas. He said he is aware of several smaller flooding incidents in recent years and that the building's power problems are well known.

The building was retrofitted with emergency showers in hallways because of the laboratory work. But they lack drains that might have helped during the flooding.

"The transformers are too small for the building," Tricas said. "This building is one of the neediest on campus."

UH spokesman Gregg Takayama said Edmondson Hall is one of several older buildings on campus in need of renovation. But there are others, including the College of Education and Gartley Hall, that the university is trying to upgrade first.

No damage estimate was available, and a tally may be difficult to come by since some of the losses involved scientific materials kept by faculty and damage to equipment that will slow research. Takayama said the university was bringing in a private company to help with the cleanup and assess the damage.

Adjunct professor Charles Birkeland rushed over to his first-floor office after he heard of the flooding, taking off his sandals and rolling up his pants to check out the damage. He said he wasn't sure if he lost anything valuable, but that water had damaged articles and other materials he used, as well as drenched CDs and other equipment.

"I think my computer is not doing too well," said Birkeland, noting the flooding probably didn't constitute a tragedy for him, but it might take time to recover publications and other materials he'd lost.

Tricas said he believed some people might have lost significant research material to the flooding and that could affect their ability to teach and do research.

"The sad thing is this is going to be devastating to several faculty in this department and it's going to interfere with their productivity," he said.

Reach Greg Wiles at gwiles@honoluluadvertiser.com.