While many students spent yesterday afternoon outside enjoying the sunny, 60-degree weather, firefighters experienced temperatures that soared into the hundreds inside the dark, burning basement of the Crate & Barrel store on Brattle Street.

Thick black smoke began pouring into the surrounding area from the burning building, forcing police and fire officials to block off area traffic.

The three-alarm fire began at about 2 p.m. in a basement storage room beneath Crate & Barrel and caused over $150,000 in damages, according to Deputy Fire Chief Gerald Reardon.

"I was cutting hair. The next thing I know, I look up and all of a sudden there's smoke everywhere," said John Mitchell, a barber at Custom Barber-Shop on the opposite side of Brattle Street.

Beth A. Wargo, Crate & Barrel's assistant manager, said she had no idea how the fire started, but Reardon said that electrical problems probably caused the blaze.

Although no one was injured, the housewares store and neighboring buildings were evacuated, including the Harvard-owned complex at 4-10 Story St. which houses the Radcliffe Development Office and the mental health department of University Health Services.

According to Rebecca Roth, Crate & Barrel's designer, smoke detectors within the building did not trigger the alarm. Instead, employees said, they smelled smoke and someone pulled the fire alarm.

Roth said she could not remember there being any other fires at the store in recent years.

But late last September, a fire at the adjacent 4-10 Story St. building resulted in approximately $50,000 in damages.

Coincidentally, employees of Radcliffe Development Office, located at 8 Story St., said they were not present in the building yesterday afternoon because of "building problems" from last September's fire.

They said that ventilation problems had led them to hold meetings outside the office.

"I can't believe this. Six months later there's a fire in this same location," said one employee who asked to remain anonymous.

By 2:30 p.m., more than a dozen fire trucks and approximately 65 firefighters had arrived to combat the hard-to-reach blaze, but at 3 p.m. the firefighters were still having trouble locating the source of the fire because of the heavy smoke.

The room was so hot that the water from the fire trucks' hoses dissolved into steam, preventing the firefighters from putting out the blaze quickly, according to firefighters.

But by 4:15 p.m., the fire had been successfully "knocked down," according to a paramedic on the scene.

Reardon credited the firefighters with preventing the spread of the fire.

"The only thing between that building being saved and that fire spreading is a wall of firefighters," Reardon said.

Danny P. Sata, who said he did not hear the smoke alarm, was doing electrical work in the basement of the store when the fire started.

Sata said he and his boss put the fire out with a fire extinguisher, but added that the flames reignited and the thick smoke forced them to leave.

Although the fire was contained in the storage room of Crate & Barrel by firefighters, smoke filled the street and surrounding office buildings.

Martha E. Jameson, who works for the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, located at 8 Story St., said smoke poured into the association's offices from the courtyard between it and 48 Brattle St.

Employees at Cultural Survival, Inc., a non-profit human rights organization, situated at 46 Brattle St., worried that the fire might delay an upcoming festival of women's indigenous films.

"We're on a pretty tight schedule," said Neil Dakal, an intern at Cultural Survival.

"We're non-profit, but now we're really going to be non-profit," another employee added.

Although yesterday's fire was not very large, Deputy Fire Chief Tom Stack said it was very difficult to handle.

"There was one way in and one way out," Stack said.

He added that the building's cement walls and ceiling and lack of ventilation made firefighters' work especially difficult.

"It's like walking into a furnace," he said.

A Cambridge police officer, who helped keep pedestrians away from the building, agreed with Stack.

"It was a pretty good-sized fire," he said. "They took a beating on this one.