With only the clothes on their backs, eight tenants escaped suffocating smoke into a downpour of rain this morning and watched as flames destroyed their possessions in their three-floor apartment building in Butler.

The 4 a.m. blaze hit so quickly some of the tenants didn't even have time to grab their shoes.

No one was seriously hurt in the fire in the building in the 300 block of North Monroe Street. But many of the residents, about half of them special needs adults, were left to wonder where they would live.

"I saw smoke and got out, and started pounding on the apartment next to me to get that guy out," said Bill Carlin, who lived in one of the apartments on the third floor.

Carlin and another tenant went door to door to alert everyone in the eight occupied apartments.

"Everything's lost, " he said, "but everyone's accounted for."

A lightning strike from the early morning storm was not ruled out as the cause of the fire, said Butler Fire Chief Nick Ban. The blaze, he added, is not believed to be suspicious.

The state police fire marshal was to be at the scene this morning to lead the investigation.

Ban's preliminary damage estimate was $275,000 to the building, owned by Ray Oesterling, and $150,000 and $200,000 to the contents.