PHILO — A broken electrical line led to a fire in downtown Philo Tuesday night.

According to Philo Fire Chief Mike McHenry, a power line behind the post office at 126 W. Washington St. broke shortly after 6 p.m. and fell on top of some residential rental units next door.

"Flashing around the top of the roof became a conductor and caught the roof on fire," McHenry said. "The real lucky thing about it was it started raining like the dickens."

McHenry said it was not known whether severe thunderstorms in the area caused the power line to break.

Residents were evacuated from three apartments, McHenry said.

Philo volunteer firefighters were on scene until about 8:30 p.m.

In addition to damage to the roof over the apartments, an electrical box in the post office was damaged.

Ameren spokesman Leigh Morris said more than 760 Philo customers were without power at the height of an outage, about 7 p.m.

"It was an inconvenience, but luckily no one was hurt," Village President Craig Eckert said.

Eckert noted that the rain and the fact that most volunteer firefighters were home from work at the time prevented the situation from escalating.

"That could have been devastating," he said.

Philo Postmaster Susan Plackett said Wednesday afternoon that the post office's mechanical area was damaged, and that the building was without air conditioning. Some Mediacom wires were also damaged, leaving the post office without Internet service.