I can't actually explain what happened, but to me it sounds like there was some kind of back-feeding going on. As though 2 line-side phases of your supply transformer went down, but the third was still live. It would still induce voltage into the secondary windings, but the voltage would be much lower than normal.
This is just an educated guess though, I've never seen this happen before. But I'm sure someone here will have a definite answer as to what would've caused a situation like this.
Shawn.
