BROOKLINE, MASS. (WHDH) - A three-story building with a diving store and apartment units went up in flames Thursday morning after an air tank inside the store exploded, fire officials said.
Fire officials said an air tank inside East Coast Divers on Boylston Street exploded just before 10 a.m. before flames and smoke began racing through the two apartment units above the business. A man who works at the store said everything happened very quickly.
“I was in the basement, down here, and there was a bang, that happens in dive shops,” said Mike Williams, an employee at East Coast Divers. “Kind of all happened so quick so we just got out.”
Sixty firefighters from Brookline, Newton, Cambridge, and Boston responded to the three-alarm blaze.
One firefighter was taken to the hospital with minor injuries. One employee at the dive shop was treated for burns to his arm at the scene.
“So far everybody seems to be doing okay. A couple of small injuries, you know, we’ll take that,” said Brookline Fire Chief John Sullivan.
Everyone is accounted for, but those who lived in the apartment units are now without a place to live as the building has been deemed uninhabitable.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
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