Restaurant worker burned in Fort Worth hotel explosion ‘fighting for her life,’ family says

Amy McDaniel
·2 min read
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Karen Mayte Lopez Ontiveros, 28, whose family and friends call her “Yami,” was the most seriously injured of the 21 people hurt in the gas-related explosion Jan. 8 at the Sandman Signature Hotel in Fort Worth. The restaurant employee and mother of two young children remains in critical condition at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas.

An employee of the Musume restaurant in downtown Fort Worth’s Sandman Signature Hotel is fighting for her life in a Dallas hospital after she was severely burned in Monday’s explosion, her family said.

Maite Karen Lopez, 27, whose family and friends call her “Yami,” was the most seriously injured of the 21 people hurt in the gas-related explosion. She remained in critical condition Wednesday at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas.

A family member started a GoFundMe account to help Lopez, her husband and two young children with medical costs and other expenses. “Her little 3-year-old girl and little 6-year-old boy and her loving husband ... will have to be there with her now until things get better,” Lopez’s cousin Maria Selene Vargas wrote on the GoFundMe page.

Lopez’s husband also worked at the hotel’s basement-level restaurant, where witnesses have said the explosion apparently occurred. He had left work before the blast but rushed back to check on his wife when he saw ambulances, the family told Star-Telegram media partner WFAA-TV.

“He went to the scene, and they told him they took people to different hospitals,” Vargas told WFAA. “He called me he’s like, ‘Help me.’ I was like, ‘What happened?’ and he’s like, ‘I can’t find Yami.’”

They spent hours calling and visiting hospitals until they found her.

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Vargas told WFAA that she is caring for the couple’s children while Lopez’s husband is at the hospital with her. Lopez’s parents are trying to get emergency visas to come from Mexico to see her.

Lopez had been trying to save money to buy a home and had just begun working an extra shift that afternoon, Vargas said.

“It was devastating seeing her ... from the last time, seeing her perfectly fine and healthy to seeing her now,” Vargas told WFAA. “It just tore me down.”

The family asked for prayers and said “any help is appreciated.”