One other lineman was injured during the incident, Fort Worth fire officials said. The exact cause of the incident hasn’t been released.<\/p>\n
The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the victim who died as 21-year-old Ryan Vargas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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In an interview with WFAA, Chris Ritzer said he considered Vargas his little brother. Vargas trained with Ritzer for more than a year, and the two worked alongside each other almost daily. While they no longer worked for the same company, they remained close and spoke almost every week.<\/p>\n
\u201cLine workers are family,” Ritzer said.<\/p>\n
Ritzer said the tight-knit nature of the job makes tragedies like this hit especially hard.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very important to us, no matter who it is, that\u2019s part of us,” Ritzer said. \u201cIt affects all of us one way or another.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ritzer said he learned about the accident through another lineman and immediately began calling hospitals, hoping Vargas had survived. That hope quickly turned into agony.<\/p>\n
\u201cPanic and heartbreak\u2026 all you do is run through what happened. What happened? What happened? What happened?\u201d Ritzer said. \u201cRyan was one of those who was always there. He believed his job was to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
He described Vargas as someone who brought a sense of calm and an uplifting spirit to the job, even in toughest moments.<\/p>\n
The night before the accident, the two spoke by phone, ending the call the same way they always did.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll I hear from the phone is, ‘All right, Chris\u2026 and all right, Ryan\u2026 and those were the last two words I spoke to him. If you believe in God, that was the goodbye I needed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cause of the electrocution remains under investigation. The mentor said that, from what he understands, no one did anything wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was not wrong. They were doing everything right\u2026 it was just an accident,” he said.<\/p>\n
Questions still remain, especially with one victim still hospitalized.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll ever know,” he said. “The guy in the hospital is not 100%.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vargas, he said, stayed close to home to support his mother in Hillsboro, a widow. He was her only child.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe chose to stay home and work to take care of his mom,” he said.<\/p>\n