Fire at Burger King in Tully

A fire at the Burger King in Tully kep crews busy Wednesday night. Flames were shooting from the roof earlier, but have now died down. Iris St. Meran has more from the scene.

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TULLY, N.Y. -- A fire that could be seen from Interstate 81 destroyed the Burger King restaurant in Tully Wednesday night.

An employee called 911 around 8 p.m. when the fire started. Everyone got out safely, but by the time firefighters arrived, flames were shooting from the roof.

Crews ran into a number of issues at the scene, having to truck in water because there were no fire hydrants. They also say they had trouble shutting off the gas, which was fueling the fire. All of this led them to make the decision to fight it from the outside.

"The biggest challenge was getting at it while maintaining the safety of the firefighters and we did not want them on the roof. There are two very heavy HVAC units in the roof, that's going to add load to the roof. It was already burning through the roof by the time we got there. So it really wasn't safe to do what we would normally do, which is to go inside the building," Tuly Fire Chief Steven Shahan said.

Firefighters say the roof of the building did collapse. They are still looking into the cause of the fire.