A fire that caused a pipe to burst and flood three floors of Edmondson Hall on the University of Hawai'i-Manoa campus during the weekend is being blamed on a faulty electrical outlet or a microwave oven.

Firefighters yesterday had yet to determine an exact cause of the fire, but investigators have traced its origin to an electrical source, said Capt. Earle Kealoha, a spokesman for the Honolulu Fire Department.

Cleanup of the four-story building continued yesterday after classrooms, faculty offices, laboratories and lecture halls sustained extensive water damage Saturday after a small fire caused a water pipe to fail.

Hallways were lined with fans and dehumidifiers as campus officials and faculty members surveyed damage.

Hawaii Restorative Services has been contracted to clean up and help assess damage.

"Most of the damage is not so much from the fire, but from the water," said Gregg Takayama, UH-Manoa spokesman.

Edmondson Hall, a 45-year-old building near Hamilton Library, is one of the older buildings on the Manoa campus and houses the university's zoology and biology departments.

"This part of the building is underpowered for the amount of research that is happening here," said UH associate professor Leonard Freed, pointing into a first-floor laboratory.

"It's a chronic problem. I'm constantly having to unplug something so that I can plug something else in."

About $3 million for electrical renovations to the building has been requested by the university in the past but has not been funded by the Legislature, Takayama said. The renovations are part of the university's $120 million-plus repair and maintenance backlog, he said.

"Essentially, we have plans (for electrical upgrades) but no money for it," he said.

Firefighters said that when the fire broke out in Freed's third-floor office, the heat melted a plastic cap on a small water pipe. Water from the pipe flooded the building, trickling down to the second and first floors and ruining ceiling tiles, computers, furniture, research material, books and other records.

Firefighters are unable to determine exactly when the fire may have started. A maintenance worker apparently discovered the water damage about 8 a.m. Sunday.

Classes usually held in the building were canceled yesterday, but are expected to resume in alternative locations today.

Freed, whose office was covered in thick black soot yesterday, said he was fortunate to not have lost any research data. However, he did lose books and thousands of scientific articles in the fire.

Freed also lost several rare books, which he had stored for his wife, Rebecca Cann, a professor of cell and molecular biology. The books had been recovered from her office after it sustained extensive flooding during the October 2004 Manoa flood.

"We rescued those books from the flood only to have them perish in the fire," he said.

A damage estimate was not available yesterday, and will likely take a while to determine, Takayama said. While damage to furniture and equipment can be estimated, it is difficult to put a price tag on possible lost research data and lost reference materials.

Researchers also are likely working according to a timetable, and it also is difficult to estimate how much it will cost researchers in terms of lost time.

Agents from the university's insurance company are expected to help determine a damage estimate.

Reach Loren Moreno at lmoreno@honoluluadvertiser.com.