BATON ROUGE - On Wednesday evening, guests at the popular Renaissance Hotel on Bluebonnet had a brief scare when the building's alarms went off and smoke was spotted in one of its hallways.

First responders with the St. George Fire Department quickly made their way to the hotel and found no fire, but a blown electrical transformer on the building's sixth floor. 

Patrons were safely moved from the sixth floor to other areas, and representatives with St. George Fire say the hotel was put on backup power until repairs were completed. 

One of the most common causes of a blown transformer is a lightning strike from a storm, forcing an overload of the transformer, or damage to wires or equipment elsewhere in the electrical grid.

Last night's incident occurred around 10:20 p.m.