An explosion inside a maintenance hole on the Texas Tech University campus in Lubbock set off fires and power outages, leading school officials to issue evacuation orders for several buildings and cancel classes for the rest of the week, university police said.

Texas Tech and Lubbock Fire Rescue officials were confirming an ongoing evacuation near the campus' engineering key as well as outages across the Tech and Texas Tech Health Sciences Center campuses following several fires and a power substation explosion Wednesday evening.

The explosion came from a manhole on campus near a substation, causing power outages in the area and at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center, officials said.