Fire and police were called to campus at about 10:30 a.m. after administrators on the third floor of Tahoe Hall smelled and saw smoke.

The cause of the smoke was a heating and air conditioning unit in room 3044. The room is an office of the Center for California Studies.

Tim Hodson, executive director of the Center for California Studies, said that he saw smoke coming from the HVAC unit and immediately turned it off, called campus security and 911. Hodson said that on an ordinary Monday morning, administrators would have been in a staff meeting. Because the Center runs the Capitol Fellows program, which had a filing deadline last week, Hodson decided to cancel the meeting to keep working on processing the applications.

“We have between 1000 and 1200 applications to process. If you were to pick the worst Monday of the year to have this happen, it would be today,” Hodson said.

Facilities Services was on-site and removed the defective motor. They were not sure yet if any other damage had been done to the unit.

Joe Manzella, Facilities electrical supervisor, said that Tahoe Hall has no smoke detectors.

“Most of the old buildings on campus only have pull stations,” Manzella said. “The idea is that if you smell smoke, head to the stairs and hit the pull switch on your way out.”

Manzella said that most of the old buildings, like Brighton Hall and Calaveras Hall, are not equipped with smoke detectors.

“Some buildings have them, some have sprinklers — just whatever was the rule at the time,” Manzella said.

Derek Fleming can be contacted at [email protected]