ST. LOUIS – Hours after Three Kings Public House server Isabella Torregrossa helped close the bar, St. Louis City and County firefighters fought a fire that engulfed the building.
Torregrossa has worked at the Delmar Loop bar for about a year and left Tuesday at 10 p.m. after what she called a normal shift. On Wednesday morning, her roommate and coworker woke her up to tell her, “Our work is on fire.”
“When me and my roommate came here, it was silent,” Torregrossa said. “There was not a word; all you see is the smoke and the firetrucks. You see some of them fist-bumping each other like, ‘OK, we got this figured out,’ and then other times you saw them, and they just look disturbed.”
There are apartments just above the bar, but no injuries were reported except a minor injury to one of the firefighters.
Torregrossa said she was devastated and felt mostly bad for her coworkers.
“It was just devastating firetrucks everywhere, and there goes our job,” she said. “There goes a lot of people’s jobs. Full-time workers are the ones that are going to suffer.”
Torregrossa said she had not heard from management about her employment but did say she “trusts management.”
“I don’t think this is the end for them at all,” she said. “This is only the beginning; this is a terrible thing to happen to the owners, but I know they are both going to strive and make the best out of a terrible situation.”