BROOKLINE, MA — Firefighters battled a 3-Alarm Fire with heavy smoke and hot conditions on a hot day in the basement of Neena's Lighting on Beacon Street in Coolidge Corner Thursday afternoon.

The fire prompted several road closures including Beacon Street for most of the afternoon as Brookline and area firefighters, some 150 in total, worked to put out the fire 1299 Beacon St. Patch was at the scene, where the front windows of Neena's lighting shop were shattered and firefighters were still fighting the active fire at 2:30 p.m. Brookline Police were out directing traffic, which had become backed up beyond Summit Avenue and both directions on Harvard Street. Several firefighters suffered minor heat related injuries and some lacerations, according to Chief of Operations Keith Flaherty. He said the trickiest part of the fire was getting access to the basement, because of lighting shop inventory down there blocking passage.

"We had to go in sideways in some places," he said. It also took a while to find the origin of the fire.

"It took a while to find the seed,"he told Patch at 3:30 p.m. The department got the call about the fire at 1:26 p.m. firefighters were on scene quickly from Brookline, then Newton and Cambridge came as the fire went to a 2-alarm and then Boston and Somerville came in to help out as it hit 3-alarms.

>>>Subscribe to Brookline Patch for more local news and real-time alerts When firefighters first arrived they reported the front of the building facing Beacon Street looked, ok, but another crew which went around back to check out the back door, were greeted with heavy fire in the basement of the building. As a precaution, the parking lot at Trader Joe's was closed, although the grocery store stayed open.



An adjacent yoga studio was evacuated, according to Tatyana Souza the Coolidge Corner Yoga owner. She the evacuation happened to happen between classes so there wasn't too much of a disruption. Souza said her yoga studio had a firewall, so she was hopeful there wouldn't be too much damage.

At this point there's no official word yet on the damage estimate.

At one point the smoke was so heavy and the C02 levels so high firefighters had to take a break from fighting the fire in the basement, according to Flaherty. Heavy fire was put out by 3:30 p.m., but there was still a lot of heat and smoke he said. Investigation into just what started the fire hadn't yet started, he said.