UNIVERSITY CITY, Mo. – Firefighters were called to the Delmar Loop Wednesday morning for a three-alarm fire at a University City pub and restaurant. Smoke could be seen coming from The Three King’s Public House.

The University City Police Department got the call around 3:30 a.m. They saw flames shooting from the roof of the kitchen area. Occupants were safely evacuated the building, then crews from Ladue, Pattonville, and St. Louis City came to the scene to help.

There are apartments above the pub, which caused further problems with the fire. Some of the units have spaces between floors and roofs. That resulted in the fire spreading in between the spaces.

FOX 2 spoke earlier with the battalion chief from the University City Fire Department about the strategy of fighting a massive fire like this one.

“We’re going to fight it as much as we can,” Chief Jon Bollinger said. “What it’s going to burn, it’s going to burn. Hopefully, if it could burn out faster, that’s fine – but we’re just going to have to surround and drown at the time and just try to prevent it, keep it contained to the area that it’s at.”

The roof of the building eventually collapsed. One University City firefighter was injured in the fire, suffering minor injuries.

A representative from the restaurant released a statement reading:

“We at Three Kings Public House are heartbroken this morning because of the fire that broke out at our Delmar Loop restaurant location,” reads a portion of a statement from the restaurant ownership. “To our friends at Iron Age Tattoo, we are here to help however we can, and we are sorry to see your business impacted as well. Three Kings Public House will be back. We will be even better, and we will always be an active part of this amazing community in University City.”

Delmar was closed for hours as firefighters worked to put out the fire. It has since reopened.