Rosa Argueta is standing under a bridge with tears in her eyes and flowers in her hand.
The roar of the Mackenzie River and the highway traffic are the only sounds as she whispers under her breath, places the flowers down on a gravel path and touches the hand of her sister weeping behind her.
Jurors, the coroner and expert witnesses stand silent as the Argueta's finally see the spot where their brother Gustavo died two years ago, patching holes under the bridge the sisters now stand under.
Gustavo Argueta was on a Genie S65 boom lift June 24, 2011 on a stretch of Hwy 11/17 over the Mackenzie Bridge when it tipped. In the time since, Rosa Argueta asked her brother Walter, who was also there that day working with his brother, to bring her to the spot but he couldn't bring himself to return.
"It meant a lot," she said of being able to visit the spot Tuesday afternoon as part of a coroner's inquest.
That inquest has been hearing for the past two days that the boom lift Gustavo was on was on a slope that it wasn't designed for when the accident happened. Along with a look at the accident site the Argueta's and the inquest visited Hertz Equipment Rentals Tuesday. There mechanic Tim Ebert demonstrated the loud alarm systems that ring when the lift is on too much of a slope. Even over the engine noise the beeps could be heard blaring from the basket.
Ebert and Ministry of Labour mechanical engineer Jeff Rivard have told the inquest that the alarm system on Gustavo's lift had been disabled and covered with spray foam. Jurors asked if the force of the impact could have broken the alarm system.
"I would say that it's unlikely that the force of the impact disconnected them" Rivard said.
The second youngest of seven, Gustavo was protected by his siblings since he was a baby.
"To me he was like my son," Rosa said. "We always mothered him."
At 24, Gustavo took the construction job to pay for school.
"He was such a happy boy," she said.
Tracks in the dirt showed that he circled the lift a few times before parking near the slope trying to reach a joint on the bridge. Workers having lunch on the bridge above say they only heard beeping and a crash. Ebert demonstrated that a different alarm sounds on the machine when it's moving. There were no witnesses. Rosa said she hopes the inquest isn't trying to imply that her brother was the one who disabled the lift's alarm.
"I don't know what they're trying to say," she said. "I don't think my brother had anything to do with that machine."
The Argueta's just want more training for employees so that no family has to go through what they have.
"It's been a very hard two years," Rosa said. "It feels like it was yesterday."
The inquest continues at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday.
