Adam Trujillo on Skilak Lake in 2023. (Photo courtesy of Jim Trujillo)
Adam J. Trujillo, 23, was the person who died in a workplace incident at Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay oil field this month, according to his father.
For the first time, the state this week also released a short summary of the construction activity that led to Trujillo’s death. State workplace regulators are investigating the incident and have not disclosed his name.
The operator of the Prudhoe Bay oilfield, Hilcorp, as well as Trujillo’s employer, Chosen Construction, last week acknowledged the fatal incident in media reports. The companies declined to disclose the victim’s name at that time.
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Jim Trujillo said in a phone call this week that he’s heartbroken over the loss of his only child. He said he wanted to disclose his son’s name because many people around Alaska knew him.
Adam Trujillo was a graduate of Kenai Central High School and a basketball player there. During high school, Adam was also part of a youth trapshooting league that competed with schools from other communities in Alaska.
The Trujillo family is well-established in the Kenai area. For decades, they owned Ed’s Kasilof Seafoods in Kasilof and Soldotna, a seafood processor, Jim Trujillo said. The family sold the business about five years ago, and it’s now called Tanner’s Alaska Seafood.
Adam Trujillo’s death on June 5 was the second reported fatality in the North Slope oil industry in recent weeks, and the fourth in a little over a year.
The string of workplace deaths represents an unusually high number of fatalities in a relatively short period of time for oil field operations in the region, state and federal workplace safety records indicate.
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Trujillo was involved in construction activity, according to a summary from the Alaska Labor Standards and Safety Division on Monday.
“An employee was caught in/between two pieces of an emissions stack being assembled with a crane,” the statement said.
He was fatally injured during lifting operations involving an emissions-stack assembly, the statement said.
“The victim died from wounds sustained … when a section of the stack rolled and crushed the employee,” the statement said.
“EMTs responded and the employee was transported to the local medical clinic where the employee was declared deceased,” the statement said.
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The statement recommended that companies take steps to prevent future accidents.
Companies should ensure that all loads are stable before any lifting equipment or material is adjusted, and that employees are not exposed to “falling objects and crushing hazards” when materials are being adjusted, the statement said.
Companies should ensure that workers involved in lifting operations “have a clear line of sight with the crane operator or otherwise have adequate means of communication.”
They should also ensure that only employees involved in a specific lifting activity are in the fall zone, while other employees involved in lifting operations are at a safe distance away.
An Alaska Air National Guard HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopter, assigned to the 210th Rescue Squadron, 176th Wing, returns to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, after conducting a rescue mission for an injured snowmachiner, Feb. 21, 2026. The mission marked the first time the AKANG used the HH-60W for a rescue. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Joseph Moon)
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska – Alaska Air National Guard personnel conducted a rescue mission Saturday, Feb. 21, after receiving a request for assistance from the Alaska State Troopers through the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center.
The mission was initiated to recover an injured snowmachiner in the Cooper Landing area, approximately 60 air miles south of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. The Alaska Air National Guard accepted the mission, located the individual, and transported them to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage for further medical care.
The mission marked the first search and rescue operation conducted by the 210th Rescue Squadron using the HH-60W Jolly Green II, the Air Force’s newest combat rescue helicopter, which is replacing the older HH-60G Pave Hawk. Guardian Angels assigned to the 212th Rescue Squadron were also aboard the aircraft and assisted in the recovery of the injured individual.
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Good Samaritans, who were on the ground at the accident site, deployed a signal flare, that helped the helicopter crew visually locate the injured individual in the heavily wooded area. Due to the mountainous terrain, dense tree cover, and deep snow in the area, the helicopter was unable to land near the patient. The aircrew conducted a hoist insertion and extraction of the Guardian Angels and the injured snowmachiner. The patient was extracted using a rescue strop and hoisted into the aircraft.
The Alaska Air National Guard routinely conducts search and rescue operations across the state in support of civil authorities, providing life-saving assistance in some of the most remote and challenging environments in the world.
cooper landing, guard, injured, jolly-green, rescue, snowmachiner
A trapper fresh out of the Cosna River country in Interior Alaska said he can’t believe how many martens he had caught in a small area so far this winter.
Friends are talking about the house-cat size creatures visiting their wood piles and porches. Could this be a boom in the number of these handsome woodland creatures?
Probably, said wildlife education specialist Mike Taras of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks.
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“When I was out in the (White Mountains National Recreation Area north of Fairbanks) a couple of weeks ago, I saw marten tracks everywhere,” he said. “My friend had a hare bound close towards him while he was out near Wolf Run cabin and then a marten came loping after the hare hot on its trail.”
The biologist and tracking expert doesn’t even have to leave home to see signs of marten this spring.
“I currently have a marten coming by my place at the edge of (Creamer’s Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge) about once a week. It is great to see her tracks — though it could be a juvenile male. I have noticed more marten tracks out on Creamer’s refuge in the past few years as well.”
The Cosna River area trapper, Steve O’Brien, said he thought “more mice” were a possible reason for marten abundance this year. Taras suspected the same.
“Research shows that the number one driver of marten populations is vole numbers,” Taras said. “But I don’t think there is concrete evidence of high vole numbers this year.”
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But Taras has seen some circumstantial evidence recently.
“I have noticed multitudes of ventilation tunnel holes on top of the snow after these recent snowstorms,” Taras said. “That many holes on top of the snow shortly after the snow makes me think that there are a lot of voles out there.”
Whatever the cause for increased marten numbers, now is perhaps a good time to see these predators of the northern woods.
“One trapper aptly described them as walking stomachs,” Tom Paragi, a retired wildlife biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks, told me 26 years ago. “They’re one of the easier animals to trap.”
Like other members of the weasel family, marten hunt and kill small animals, most often voles, though they sometimes eat snowshoe hares, young birds and blueberries.
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Marten feed on red squirrels in other parts of North America, but in Alaska biologists have seen marten sharing squirrels’ underground network of winter tunnels without killing them.
Marten aren’t afraid to tackle animals their own size, Paragi said. He once pieced together a marten drama evident by tracks left behind in the snow. He observed where a marten paused during its wandering after seeing a goshawk perched on a low tree limb.
He could tell by blood and other marks that the marten killed the goshawk, making a meal of a raptor that could have had the marten for lunch.
“They are fairly fearless,” Paragi said.
Marten are loners, roaming forests solo except for a few weeks during the breeding season. They seem to prefer mature conifer forests for birthing and raising young, and use hollow logs for dens.
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The marten is one of a few mammals able to delay part of its reproductive cycle. Marten mate in mid-summer when food is plentiful, but fertilized eggs within females don’t implant into the uterus wall until springtime, a phenomenon triggered by longer days. Marten kits are born in late March to mid-April. In August, the youngsters go their own ways, beginning solitary lives that can last up to 14 years.
Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute. Portions of this story appeared in 2000.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/adn/LWUSWXFUR5FXPJPM7EU52XBVUI.jpg?ssl=1 "State releases summary of most recent Prudhoe Bay workplace death")
