A North Slope worker was killed Wednesday when a pickup truck pinned him against a section of pipe. He is the second man crushed by a vehicle in Prudhoe Bay in roughly three weeks.

New Jersey resident Mike Phelan, 59, died in the accident at Prudhoe Bay's North Gas Injection Pad a little after 2 p.m., BP spokesman Steve Rinehart said.

Phelan was a BP contractor who worked for MISTRAS Group Inc., a Princeton Junction, N.J.-based outfit that evaluates the structural integrity of energy and industrial infrastructure.

At the time of the accident, he was working on a pipeline inspection crew and was marking locations to be evaluated in a future routine inspection along an elevated line on the gas injection pad, Rinehart said. At least one other worker was on the pad with him, but Phelan was working by himself at the time of the accident, he said.

"While he was up at the line, it appears that his pickup truck rolled up against him and the pipeline and pinned him there," Rinehart said. "We don't know how or why the truck rolled up against him or the actual kind of injuries suffered."

Rinehart said he didn't know how long Phelan had been pinned before being discovered.

Once the other worker found him, he called control, which dispatched a medical response team to the site, Rinehart said. The crew was unable to revive Phelan, who was declared dead on the scene.

"It was a tragic event and our hearts and prayers go out to this employee's family and his friends," Rinehart said.

Alaska Occupational Safety and Health had an investigator on the Slope on Thursday, said Steve Standley, the chief of enforcement.

It is the second time in recent weeks a North Slope worker was involved in a serious accident. Just before midnight on Oct. 27, Arctic Slope Regional Corp. worker John Fay, working under contract for BP, was critically injured when he was pinned between a tractor truck and a semi-trailer.

The driver of the truck that pinned him was an employee of Alaska West Express Inc., a trucking subsidiary of the Anchorage-based Lynden Inc.

Fay has recovered some, and is now able to breathe without the use of a machine, and is expected to survive, Standley said.

"The thing, to me, that's noticeable is that both of these accidents involved vehicles pinning or crushing employees. Now, we're going to be looking very closely at what's going on," Standley said. "Through our investigation, we'll determine whether there were any violations committed by the employers."

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