A fire tore through a Route 9 building in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 28, 2026, igniting compressed air tanks at the East Coast Divers shop and sending flames through the first floor. One employee suffered minor burns and a firefighter was cut while fighting the blaze.
For Brookline, the fire landed in the middle of the day with people still inside the building and a business that was heading into its busiest stretch. Seven residents were displaced, though five were in town when the fire broke out and two were away, and crews also saved a cat from the second floor.
Mike Williams said he and others banged on doors to get people out of the upstairs apartments, adding that there were only two people upstairs as far as he knew. That quick response mattered because the fire did not stay contained; the flames set off multiple compressed air cannisters inside the scuba shop, turning a routine alarm into a more dangerous scene on a busy commercial stretch.
Brookline Fire Chief John Sullivan said the fire started in the back area of the shop, but investigators have not yet determined exactly what sparked it. He also said oxygen is flammable in the way people understand it day to day, noting that air contains about 23% oxygen, a reminder of why the tanks in the shop posed such a serious risk once the fire spread.
The timing was a blow for East Coast Divers. Williams said this is the start of the shop’s season and that the business has only about three months to make the most of it, making the loss especially costly as it heads into its most lucrative period of the year. Within hours, a customer had already started an online fundraiser that had raised more than $2,000, a sign of how quickly the local community moved to help.
The fire also arrived just weeks after Brookline voters approved a budget override to help keep fire department services funded. Town meeting member Tommy Vitolo pointed to that decision after the blaze, saying people tend to remember emergency responders on days like this and that the town had already voted earlier in May to maintain those services. For now, the question is not whether crews responded well — they did — but what started the fire in the back of the shop and how long East Coast Divers will be dealing with the damage.
